"Euro" in Russian

[Dianna Murphy]

 >Kakovo roda the new European monetary unit? Vy mne dolzhny odin, odno ili
>odnu euro?
>And how do you spell it--with E, or with e oborotnoe?


According to the general rule for inanimate indeclinable nouns, /jevro/
'euro' (spelled E, with stress on the first syllable, I'm pretty sure)
should be neuter.

There is precedence, however, for indeclinables denoting currencies to be
masculine.  The noun /leone/ (the currency in Sierra Leone), for example,
is masculine, at least according to Kolesnikov's 1995 _Slovar'
nesklonjaemyx slov_.

BUT there are plenty of examples of /jevro/ currently being assigned to the
feminine gender.   A recent  _Itogi_ article had the form /jevro
dolzhna/... (Thanks to Anelya Rugaleva for this example)

I wouldn't bet my last euro on it, but I predict that the gender of /jevro/
will eventually be fixed as masculine.

Dianna Murphy
Ohio State University