From: Antoine Leca (Antoine10646@leca-marti.org)
Date: Wed May 04 2005 - 04:10:44 CDT
On Friday, April 29, 2005 11:06 PM Philippe Verdy wrote:
> Don't forget the well-known traditional name for "@" in French: "une
> arrobace"
Never _seen_ this one.
I _know_ about "arrobe" or "arobe", which is indeed the traditional name of
the thing (an unit of weight), whose counterpart is arroba in Spanish. And I
do know quite a bit about this: here in Valencia the oranges is one of the
most basic business, we are litterally surrounded by camps of them; and
everybody refer to "arrobas" when it comes to measuring them; an arroba of
oranges is about 13 kg, and it is also the content of a box. As a matter of
facts, Patrick, the comment about it is sligthly incorrect: it is not an
"/ancient/ Spanish weight unit", just a "Spanish weight unit." ;-)
I have heard in France several prononciations by uneducated people. /aRobas/
is one of them. When they try to write it, they usually use "a[r]robas" (in
singular).
Nevertheless, this is wrong, just folkore. I have also heard "a rond"
(rounded a), "truc", "machin" (foo, bar), or "the sign atop the 0 key",
according to its position on the classical layout... Etc.
Nowadays, in France the most use is "at".
> It was also commonly named "a commercial" in the past,
At the very least it should be "à commercial".
> 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...).
I can confirm that. And like the famous Gallics ;-), the ones that are
resisting are every day less in number. I used to be one, but since I learn
about the real traditional name I find no reason to not use it (and yes, it
is easier for me, as I wrote above.)
Antoine
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed May 04 2005 - 04:14:58 CDT