Message-Id: <6.2.1.2.2.20050430000706.04cffdb0@mail.jefsey.com>
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 00:31:25 +0200
To: "Philippe Verdy" <verdy_p@wanadoo.fr>, <unicode@unicode.org>,
	"Andrew C. West" <andrewcwest@alumni.princeton.edu>
From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey@jefsey.com>
Subject: Re: String name and Character Name
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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outdated nowadays....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