Pater Familias

Theories, observations, and articles, by Philip Schaefer · All posts · Categories

@ (REDUX).

October 14, 2009 at 7:26 PM · Uncategorized

@ (REDUX). I posted here about the words that various languages use for @, as reported in letters to the London Review of Books. A letter from Stephen Richards in the October 8 issue adds the information that the German word for @ can be translated as “spider monkey” but says that “as the language becomes lamentably more anglicised, many Germans simply say ‘at.'” Another letter reports that @ was used by the MI5 during World War II as shorthand for “alias”, “as in ‘Smith@Jones’.”