Euro(s)

[Peter A. McGraw]

It's common in many European languages not to inflect the name of their
currency for number, at least when giving a specific amount or the
denomination of a bill or coin.  E.g., pre-Euro Germany had eine Mark, zwei
Mark, etc., Holland had een Gulden, twee Gulden, etc.  Austria officially
had ein Schilling, zwei Schilling, etc.--however, "zwei Schillinge" was
common in colloquial speech.  One of my instructors in a
German-for-foreigners class in Vienna (way back when) told us that lots of
people said "zwei Schillinge" but that that was incorrect.  So it would be
natural to extend this pattern to the "Euro."

Britain always had "one pound, two pounds."  (But I noticed once that South
Africa apparently had "one Rand, two Rand.")

--On Sunday, July 14, 2002 9:24 PM -0400 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

> The coins have "EURO CENT."  The bills (there is no one Euro bill) have
> "EURO."  Again, it would appear that EURO is the plural, but I heard
> "EUROS" on BBC just now.



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                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu