Re: CHAT: San Marino

From: "Lars Henrik Mathiesen"

> In Danish (where I'm reasonably sure about the facts), there's a class
> of nouns where indefinite singular and plural coincide. And for some
> reason, all the SI units and most units of currency end up in that
> class. The exceptions to the latter that I can think of are kroner,
> centimer, rialer (with Danish plural endings); dollars; and pesos,
> escudos, and other spanish-sounding currencies.
Actually, I was thinking after I sent my last post, English does this too
with reasonably unfamiliar monetary units, particularly the "exotic East"
currencies:

eight renminbi
eight yuan
eight yen
eight won
eight baht

Perhaps that's because the languages which are spoken where these currencies
are used don't have grammatical plural, but I'm not sure.

Still, what would I do with a krona if I were speaking in English?

seven krona?
seven kronas?
seven kronor?

or a lira?

nine lira (yeah, right, what would that buy me? let's amend that to)
nine million lira (so, perhaps, we could buy an orange)
nine million liras
nine million lire

In both cases, the third option seems a little forced unless you were among
a group of English-speaking expats in Sweden or Italy. But I'm waffling as
to the first and second choices. I would definitely have to defer to what
other people were using.

Kou