Re: OT: coins and currency

On 1/7/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> Yep - and I cannot imagine the plural beings always 'euro' and 'cent' in
> practice in English. I would expect _both_ euro _and_ euros, just we use
> both pound and pounds now. For example, we say 'a five pound note', 'a
> ten pound note', and a price like £5.50 is more likely to be said as
> 'five pound fifty' than 'five pounds fifty' tho £5.00 is more likely to
> be 'five pounds' than 'five pound'.
Over here, $5.50 would never be read "five dollar fity"; it would be
either "five fifty" (by far the most common reading, but requiring
context to understand that (a) it's a dollar amount and (b) $5.50
rather than $550 or even $550,000 is meant) or "five dollars and fifty
cents"  (or "five and a half dollars").  The plural of "dollar" is
always "dollars" (and adjective formations in English tend to eschew
plurals, hence the "twenty-dollar bill" rather than the
*"twenty-dollars bill"), so using "euro" in English sans -s sounds
very strange.  By which I mean, it sounds French. :)


> The official directive seemed a tad over-prescriptive to me.
Indeed.

> Also I notice that no Irish forms were included.
And no Esperanto!  For shame, EU! :)

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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