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October 23, 2013

4

Where it’s at – how to say @ in different languages

The other day a colleague was telling someone his email address in French. He was halfway through and ran across a problem. He didn’t know the word for “the little ‘a’ in the circle”. In English we just say ‘at’, but that translates as ‘à’ in French and that sounds remarkably like the letter ‘a’. See the problem?

What he should have said was ‘arobase’, but different cultures call it completely different things – from official names to animal-based nicknames. Below we’ve found some of the most creative words for “the little ‘a’ in the circle”:

Animals (With Curly Bits)

curly animals

The Germans, Romanians and South Africans (among others) all describe it as a ‘monkey tail’.
Thai and Hungarian people call it a ‘worm’ and the Italians refer to it as a ‘snail’.
The Swedish and Danish describe the shape as an ‘elephant’s trunk’ and the Greeks think it looks more like a ‘duckling’.

Curly Food

In Catalan, the “little ‘a’ in the circle” is named after a swirly pastry called an ‘ensaïmada’.
In Hebrew it’s named after a strudel.
In Slovak, it’s named after a rolled pickled herring!

food

Other Uses

The “little a” isn’t only used in email addresses. In Spanish, the symbol is sometimes used to represent masculine and feminine gender in the same word, for example ‘amig@s’ means male and female friends, although this is frowned upon by the Real Academia Española, so we don’t recommend it!

And in Portugal and Brazil, the symbol is used in text messages to represent ‘french kiss’ – so be careful how you use it if you’re travelling in those countries…

What do you call the @ symbol?

4 Comments Post a comment
  1. Aubrey Rogers
    Nov 1 2013

    I am curious: How do you say, or write, the “@” symbol in Spanish? Thanks!

    Reply
    • EuroTalk
      EuroTalk
      Nov 11 2013

      It’s called the ‘arroba’ or sometimes ‘la a comercial’ (‘the commercial a’). However when you’re writing your email address down you would still use the @ symbol as you would in English.

      Reply
  2. Rolf Rindstad
    Nov 1 2013

    In Norway the @ is called krøllalfa, ” curl alfa”

    Reply
    • EuroTalk
      EuroTalk
      Nov 11 2013

      Thanks for sharing this – all the names seem to be based on the curly shape, but some are more literal than others.

      Reply

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