Why no plural euro?

pickarooney

Why is "euro" not pluralised in English? Who decided this exactly?

Alun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_issues_concerning_the_euro

kittenkiller

Blame the French!

Chalk

irish people never have an 's' for their monetary plural,

ie,
20 pound / punt / quid etc.

southsiders may disagree
i honestly dont think ive ever said 20pounds
much like a 30mile an hour zone , no s there either

pickarooney

Alun wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_issues_concerning_the_euro

Cheers

It struck me as a bit odd that a banking institution could make rules governing language, but it goes a bit deeper than that. Glad to see I'm not really wrong to say "euros" though.

Talliesin

Michael Everson's page on The euro and standardization has quite a bit on this (unsurprisingly given his campaign to have the official English language plural changed to "Euros".

Dublinsausage

Chalk wrote:

irish people never have an 's' for their monetary plural,

ie,
20 pound / punt / quid etc.

southsiders may disagree
i honestly dont think ive ever said 20pounds
much like a 30mile an hour zone , no s there either

What a dork.

I'm Irish, are you ?

Kwekubo

Basically, the Department for Finance messed up the changeover - they misinterpreted the legislation. All other English speaking countries and the European Commission translations bureau itself use "euros" as the plural.

pickarooney

What's to misinterpret though? A financial institution has as much jurisdiction on linguistic rules as the mobil library in Buncrana has on fixing international interest rates.
People would really follow any oul ****e you tell them.

Zaph

I agree, and next week I'll be starting a campaign to have the word "sheeps" accepted as the plural for sheep. Who's with me?

foxybrowne

In Irish, and Scots Gaelic, the plural form of euro, eurochaí, is often used, though it is not entirely correct.

pickarooney

foxybrowne wrote:

In Irish, and Scots Gaelic, the plural form of euro, eurochaí, is often used, though it is not entirely correct.

Sounds a bit Tolkeinish (Tolkeinesque?)

Pitseleh

Now I may be waaaayyy off but I remember reading when the euro was first introduced that 'euros' was not used due to it meaning 'urine' in Greek. This may be/may have been complete crap though.

DublinWriter

pickarooney wrote:

Why is "euro" not pluralised in English? Who decided this exactly?

Because the addition of an 's' at the end of a word is an English language construct, although used a lot in French too.

In Germany, they mainly use 'en' to denote plural, and of course every other language in the Eurozone will have a different syntax.

As the currency was meant to traverse borders, it had to be language neutral, although the exception is the Greek 'EYP *alpha sign*' printed under the word 'Euro' on every note.

Hense, no 'S'.

LordSutch

Chalk wrote:

irish people never have an 's' for their monetary plural,

ie,
20 pound / punt / quid etc.

southsiders may disagree
i honestly dont think ive ever said 20pounds
much like a 30mile an hour zone , no s there either

Chalk, what planet are you on matey? are you seriously telling me that you would say twenty pound? or one hundred pound? you cannot be serious! Its always been pounds or pence since the beginning of time, but for some strange reason Brussels has decided that the plural of EURO really is EURO, the same goes for CENT, never an S to be seen ..................

The demise of the letter S is possibly due to the consumption of too many sprouts in Brussels?

simu

ArthurF wrote:

Chalk, what planet are you on matey? are you seriously telling me that you would say twenty pound? or one hundred pound? you cannot be serious! Its always been pounds or pence since the beginning of time, but for some strange reason Brussels has decided that the plural of EURO really is EURO, the same goes for CENT, never an S to be seen ..................

The demise of the letter S is possibly due to the consumption of too many sprouts in Brussels?

Well, many people in Cork used to say 20 pound anyway.

Tar.Aldarion

ah we're not in cork anymore boi.

yip it's pound.

DublinWriter

simu wrote:

Well, many people in Cork used to say 20 pound anyway.

Or millin for million.

pickarooney

DublinWriter wrote:

Because the addition of an 's' at the end of a word is an English language construct, although used a lot in French too.

In Germany, they mainly use 'en' to denote plural, and of course every other language in the Eurozone will have a different syntax.

As the currency was meant to traverse borders, it had to be language neutral, although the exception is the Greek 'EYP *alpha sign*' printed under the word 'Euro' on every note.

Hense, no 'S'.

But the major problems with that are
a) it's nobodies business but the speakers of the language how they should speak it
b) every other country, quite rightly, pluralises the word 'euro' the same way they do every other currency.
c) there is no conceivable sense in requesting that speakers across Europe pluralise a word the same way, as they'll obviously all pronounce it differently, and use it in sentences spoken in a different language, hece nullifying any infinitesimal pretence at cross-border economo-linguisitc harmony.
d) 'euro' is not a trademark