Here in Norway, many things work by email, and I’ve found myself having to give my email address over the phone about half a dozen times. Pronouncing, or even spelling out my last name in an intelligible way already takes a while, but my email address is even worse. Once I’ve had to describe what an hyphen is, because the person I was talking to didn’t know the term (nor did they know ‘dash’). It took me a good 3 minutes to explain. You can try, too!
Even individual letters are difficult. If you don’t speak Norwegian and don’t know the alphabet, or can’t say it right yet, and your correspondant doesn’t know English too well, it’s a challenge. You’d think that the NATO phonetic alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie, etc.) was designed specifically for that, but it actually isn’t that good at it. (I hope aircraft pilots have a different experience).
Still, I decided to use it for a new address that would be simpler to spell out. I chose one of the most understandable words: tango, and avoided the ones where pronunciation varies a lot, like Juliet or X-ray.
Then of course, I couldn’t buy tango.com, so I had to make it longer. Perhaps tangodelta.com? Taken. tangodeltacharlievictor.com? Available, but it’s a bit long, in the end, and you’d have to add “all in one word” when saying it. So I went for trailing digits: tango1.com, tango2.com. No, at least 2 before one is available. So which 2 digits? I chose 57, without thinking that much about it. They are simple in English and hopefully understandable in a few more language.
So you can now email me at: max “little-monkey-tail” (to reuse the cute Dutch name for @) tango57.com. That gets redirected.
What a shame I can’t change my last name as easily. “Max Tango57″. That’s sounds so cool. Like a spy, or a robot.
