The symbol @ has now become the very fabric of life for all around the world. While we tweet, tag or search for people, places or things in the cyberspace, @ always comes handy. The sign is older than we think. Some scholars believe it was invented over 1,300 years ago, as a way to minimise the Latin word ‘ad’– which means ‘at’ or ‘to’ or ‘toward’— into a single pen stroke.
Now, the symbol has become so important that we feel a need to make sense of it, thus inspiring its own pop culture. Germans, Poles, and South Africans call it ‘a monkey’s tail’ in their language. Chinese think of it as a little mouse, Italians and French, a snail. For the Russians, it symbolises a dog, while the Finnish believe the symbol is motivated by a curled-up sleeping cat.
