We also say "Arobas" in french.
It is arobase, with an 'e' at the end.
At
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Re: At
#62I'm currently in Kashmir where everyone always says in full
"... at the rate of..." in the middle of their email address. So far I've not met many twitter users.
Re: At
#63Very interesting read. As italian, I agree with our "exotic" gestures which follow the spelling of email addresses when it comes to 'chiocciola' (@)
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#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for teaching me how to pronounce Japanese words! I am not all that familiar with the language. My limited experience includes being born in this little clubbing district called Roppongi, growing up in this little city called Tokyo until I was fourteen, and having read somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 books in it. Even with such a limited knowledge of Japanese, I ostensibly have a monthly column in a nationall…
Haha, alright, I did not know what was your background in Japanese. :) It just seemed weird to mention Japanese for this particular case of @ since I don't think there is anything remarkable to it compared to how it's pronounced in other languages as mentioned in the original post. What magazine do you write in ?
Sorry for sounding like an ass, but I thought I would provide my slightly different perspective, precisely because Japanese was not particularly remarkable pronunciation-wise (but still interesting semiotics-wise)
I contribute to one of the Nikkei publications.
Re: At
#65No one actually uses „Klammeraffe“ in German. It’s just „at“ (English pronunciation – most of the time). I wonder how widespread the use of those alternative names for “at” is in other languages he lists. In German „Klammeraffe“ is this weird, unwieldy nickname that used to be somewhat fashionable a long time ago (mid-nineties maybe, whenever many people where first confronted with email addresses). I remember it bei…
In Italian, "chiocciola" and "chiocciolina" are definitely the most common.
Depends on the contest. With friends, family and people not very tech savvy, yes, it's widespread. In work circles the English version is commonly accepted.
Re: At
#66We also say "Arobas" in french.
French native here as well. I personnally say "at" when spelling out email addresses. "Arobase" ou "et commercial" are names of the symbol itself - not commonly used because one rarely has to name the symbol.
Re: At
#67All I can think is how much longer it must be to speak tweets aloud in other languages. As opposed to "at Jim Lipsey, at Gruber, at Chockenberry, at The Talk Show", now it's "chee-o-cho-la Jim Lipsey, chee-o-cho-la Gruber..." Sounds like a mouthful already.
IIRC latin languages offset longer words by speaking generally more syllables per second. The information per time unit is roughly equal across languages. I don't think they actually realize that the word is long/awkward (or at least not to the same degree an English native speaker would realize).
That and the fact that in English there's always a little pause before, to let the listener understand you're spelling a very short word. Just listen next time someone says an email address.
In italian not so much, so chiocciola is pronounced both very fast and without the need for a declarative pause. In the end it doesn't feel long at all.
Re: At
#68Re: At
#69"[chiocciola] is fun to say, too. Something like 'chee-o-cho-la' but with more exotic hand gestures." The initial "chi" in Italian is pronounced like "kee" (e.g. chianti). So this would be pronounced "kee-o-chio-la"
I'm italian and I confirm it ;)
Re: At
#70I would have mentioned that the purported Latin origin of the symbol is much closer to the English way of saying it.
Some historians believe that the @ symbol fist appeared as a contraption of the word "ad", which loosely means "towards". Scribes may have altered the word by exaggerating the upstroke of the d.
So at least on twitter, "at" is pretty consistent with the original meaning of the symbol.