Not quite ... we call it Klammeraffe ... now how do you translate that?
Bracket-monkey?
Mar sin leibh
Mėcheal
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Everson" <everson@indigo.ie>
To: <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2001 11:51 AM
Subject: COMMERCIAL AT
> From TYPO-L:
>
> Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:40:30 -0400
> From: Randal <digitas@PANIX.COM>
> Subject: @ Long Last
>
> A Brief History of @, by Bruno Giussani, May 07 2001
>
> The man who first put the @ sign into the structure of e-mail
> addresses was Ray Tomlinson, a computer engineer who in 1971
> performed what he calls "a quick hack" and sent the first electronic
> message - to himself. Why did he pick the sign? "I scanned the
> keyboard for a sign that wouldn't appear on anyone's name, and
> couldn't therefore create any confusion."
>
> But how did the @ sign end up on the computer keyboard in the
> firstplace? Most linguists, say that the @ sign is a recent
> invention, appearing sometime during the 18th century as a
> commercial symbol indicating price per unit, as in "5 apples @ 10
> pence." Yet another linguist, researcher Denis Muzerelle, says the
> sign is the result of a different twist, when the accent over the
> word "ā"used by French and German merchants was hastily extended.
>
> But last July an Italian researcher discovered some 14th-century
> Venetian commercial documents clearly marked by the @ sign, where it
> was used to represent a gauge of quantity, the "anfora," or jar.
> Giorgio Stabile also found a Latin-Spanish dictionary dating from
> 1492 where "anfora" is translated into "arroba," a measure of weight.
> It's therefore natural that, in 1885 the "commercial a" was included
> on the keyboard of the first model of Underwood typewriter and from
> there migrated into the standard set of computing characters (such
> as ASCII) 80 years later. The biggest problem with the @ sign
> nowadays is what to call it. Spaniards and Portuguese still use
> "arroba" - which the French have borrowed and turned into "arobase."
> Americans and Britons call it the "at-sign." So do the Germans
> ("at-Zeichen"), Estonians ("ät-märk") and Japanese ("atto maak").
> However, in most languages the sign is described using a wide
> spectrum of metaphors lifted from daily life. References to animals
> are the most common. Germans, Dutch, Finns, Hungarians, Poles and
> South
> Africans see it as a monkey tail.
>
> The snail - oddly enough for the anti-snail-mail set - portrays the @
> sign not only in French ("petit escargot") and Italian
> ("chiocciola"), but also in Korean and Esperanto ("heliko"). Danes
> and Swedes call it "snabel-a" - the "a" with an elephant's trunk;
> Hungarians a worm; Norwegians a pig's tail; Chinese a little mouse;
> and Russians a dog. Food offers other tantalizing metaphors. Swedes
> have borrowed the cinnamon bun ("kanelbulle"). Czechs have been
> inspired by the rolled pickled herring ("zavinac") commonly eaten in
> Prague's pubs. . . Hebrew speakers use "shtrudl" (or "strudel"), as
> in the well-known roll-shaped pastry.
> --
> Michael Everson
>
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