See @, Say Worm?
Did you ever wonder where the site name www.rencsi.com came from? Rencsi (pronounced wrenchy) was my nickname when I was a business English trainer in Hungary. Hungary is a very interesting country and some say Hungarian is one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn, but I learned that English can be difficult too.
For example, one entire business English lesson is needed to teach people learning English as a second (or third or fourth) language what to say in English when you see symbols like the ones we use everyday in email addresses. My email address
rencsi@rencsi.com
would be read by a Hungarian as
rencsi kukac rencsi pont com
(pronounced wrenchy coo-cots wrenchy poant comb).
That directly translates to
rencsi worm rencsi point com
This phrase would not be recognized as an email address in any English speaking nation!
I learned this the hard way. I was collecting my students email addresses verbally and realized with the first student, an IT professional, that he had probably seen the @ symbol a million times, but never had to say it out loud in English to anyone. We immediately stopped and collected a list of common email and internet symbols on the flip chart and labeled them how they should be read out loud in English.
@ is at
. is dot
_ is underscore
- is dash
: is colon
/ is slash
\ is backslash
At the same time, I learned that @ is kukac or worm in Hungarian (and some also say the sound a chicken or rooster makes). Living abroad was full of experiences like this. I think everyone should do it at least once in his or her life.
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Another way a student in class explained kukac to me was that it was similar to the sound a rooster makes. That would mean we read our email addresses as:
rencsi COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO rencsi point com