Re: OT: the euro & 01.01.02 (was NATLANG/FONT:)

En réponse à Padraic Brown <agricola@...>:

>
> It makes sense as inflation rises rapidly. Latin American
> countries are famous for revaluing currencies this way.
> Turkey did one recently; Russia has done a couple since
> the late 80s. Italy will be doing one in about a week.
I guess it's gonna be strange for them, since a Euro is about 2000 Lire :))) .
Strangely enough, Italy is the country that did the least about the change of
money. Two months ago, you could still not find any prices in Euros, only in
Lire, and most people there still have no idea how much worth is a Euro.

> One day you have 50.000.000 cuatros in your pocket; next
> day they get exchanged at 500.000:1 and the teller gives
> you 100 nuevos pistoles. Your grandfather probably remembers
> when the cuatro bought a thousand old reales. It doesn't
> make much sense for us because the dollar has been so strong
> and stable for so long, and its slide in value has been so
> slow.
>
30 years ago France got a similar revaluation: a Franc became 100 times its
value. So suddenly people began to talk about "anciens francs" (now worth one
centime :)) ) and "nouveaux francs", the problem being that most elder people
never managed to remember which was which and carried on counting in "anciens
francs" making themselves their life difficult. Imagine that nowadays there are
still people today counting that way (30 years after the change). That makes
the Euro quite a challenge in France...

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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