More dissenters join the ranks in euro spelling controversy

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the Malta Independent Online

More dissenters join the ranks in euro spelling controversy
MICHAEL CARABOTT
Tuesday, January 10, 2006


The debate over the spelling of the EUs common currency the euro has
continued with an AFP report saying that Hungary, Lithuania and Slovenia
have joined ranks with dissenters Malta and Latvia. Latvia, which is due
to adopt the euro in 2008, said last week it would call the euro the eiro
because the eu dipthong doesnt exist in Latvian. Latvian Education
Minister Ina Druviete even threatened to take Europe to court over the
issue. Meanwhile, Maltas national language council believes that the
Maltese spelling of the euro should be ewro, for reasons much similar to
those of Latvia. The National Council of the Maltese language last month
decided that the spelling of the word euro in Maltese will be ewro. In the
Maltese language, the letters e and u never appear next to each other, the
Malta Language Council told AFP. In fact, The Malta Independent spoke to
council president Prof. Manwel Mifsud, who said the motto of Europe: Unity
in Diversity, should also hold true with regard to the spelling of the
euro. Meanwhile, Latvias neighbour Lithuania is joining the linguistic
rebellion and has opted for euras, Hungary, wants the o to have an accent
and Slovenia want the evro. Although all five states are party to an EU
treaty stipulating that the single European currency must be called the
euro they have turned a deaf ear to exhortations from the European Central
Bank (ECB) and various EU institutions to stick to the rule, agreed in the
mid-1990s. This is not a monetary matter but language policy. We could, if
need be, defend our rights at the European Court of Justice, Minister
Druviete said. The dissent over what to call the euro came to light
shortly after the EU expanded by 10 members in May 2004. It was then that
EU officials found that there had been translation errors in the Council
regulation calling for the single currency to be called by a single name.
Holland, which held the EUs revolving presidency in the second half of
2004, pulled out all the stops to try to reach a compromise with the new
members. They proposed that all countries should keep the eur root, which
could then be given different endings that sat well with a member states
language. But Malta and Latvia, whose populations together add up to less
than three million, stood up to the EU and caused the Dutch compromise to
founder. In any case, Malta pointed out, the European Central Bank uses
each countrys different names for the currency on its website, until this
fact was pointed out to the ECB by AFP prior to publishing its report. The
ECB then proceeded in altering the spellings on its publications.


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