From: JFC (Jefsey) Morfin (jefsey@jefsey.com)
Date: Fri Apr 29 2005 - 16:31:25 CST
At 23:06 29/04/2005, Philippe Verdy wrote:
>Don't forget the well-known traditional name for "@" in French: "une
>arrobace" (normally feminine in typographic language like for the term
>"une espace", but many French users think these terms are masculine, so
>their genre is now ambiguous... unless one makes the distinction between
>the typographic usage that designates the glyph or an implementation of
>this glyph in a page layout, and the other usages where it just designates
>the abstract character in some text).
eternal dispute. Nevertheless your description does not match my French
(what is a good point in favor of what I try to make the WG-ltru
understand: languages are more complex than just a langtag).
I personally use "arobase" (Google seems to confirm it is the most used in
a 100 to 1 proportion) and pronounce it "arobase" or "a commercial" when
people do not catch my "ad" which is the correct meaning, pronunciation and
intent (a in a d) like the perluette (et - t linked to an et).
That "@" was used as the sign of the weigh "arroba" is another story, like
$ for the peso (the flag on a pole, sign of gold) the pound copied to show
they also had gold the story says, copied with a second richer strike to
make it a dollar sign for the Thaler. Two strikes copied in the Yen and now
in Euro sign.
No one is calling the Joachimthaler sign "fake, fat, northern or
pretentious peso" ...
>It was also commonly named "a commercial" in the past, but the expression
>is now deprecated.
Then my kids are deprecated. When you are more than 15 you are totally
outdated nowadays....
>Those French users that use "@" in email addresses now pronounce it "at"
>like in English, some are resisting and use the french usual preposition
>"à" when spelling these addresses orally...).
>
>Despite this, for now, I have not heard or read any expression like "le
>signe at" in French text or speech. So "un (une) arrobace" is still used
>everywhere when not spelling an email addresses or related technical
>syntaxes (but many don't know how to write "arrobace" correctly -- some
>even write "arobasse" -- and this orthographic difficulty may be one
>reason why the old oral expression "a commercial" still persists in French
>on the written form).
I understand it is the AFNOR standard.
Funny to discuss details of French in Franglish.
Bonne soirée.
jfc
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