C trigraphs were created to solve this problem for ANSI C, although their late introduction and inconsistent implementation in compilers limited their use. Many programmers kept their computers on US-ASCII, so plain-text in Swedish, German etc. (for example, in e-mail or Usenet) contained "{, }" and similar variants in the middle of words, something those programmers got used to. For example, a Swedish programmer mailing another programmer asking if they should go for lunch, could get "N{ jag har sm|rg}sar." as the answer, which should be "Na jag har smorgasar." meaning "No I've got sandwiches."

Answer this question, if possible (if impossible, reply "unanswerable"): What was happening to the C trigraphs that were sent from programmers?
unanswerable