Israeli Strudel

Sometimes, while traveling around, you get to pick up some neat trivia. While in Israel, I learned about the ‘Strudel.’

Back around 1890, Hebrew wasn’t a common spoken language. Like Latin or Sanskrit, there were many who knew it, but it wasn’t spoken daily. Ben Yehuda, born in the Russian empire who moved to (then) Palestine decided that the diaspora needed a common language and that it would be Hebrew.

For a language to flourish, it has to quickly adapt and assimilate many new words. And since there was no word for the symbol ‘@’ the Israelis decided to call it the Strudel, because it looked like their pastry.