Rules of usage - euro / EUR / € / USD / $

Hello,

I'm translating a document to english and have never used the currency Euro in english.

For example in German you would say.
How would you say that in english?





What is standard?

Thanks,
Frank

€54 million

Currency names are not capitalised in English.
And plurals are plurals.
So:
54 million euros

Edit: or what OG said coz it's shorter

Or what I like to call my invoice for June.

Is there a formal distinction on where one should put the € - before or after? I see people write €54, but I also see people write 54€. I'm not sure which one I like better or which is technically appropriate.

actually, believe it or not, there is actually a European directive on how to write Euro and the plural thereof in each language. (Have they nothing better to do n Brussels?). The official English plural of euro is, as Jeeves says, euros, whereas in German it is Euro.

See here for full information (sic.)

@IPJ. In German it is common to put the Euro sign after the number, it was the same with the DM. In English, one would normally put the symbol first, eg $6 but not 6$.

symbol always goes before (in English)

As far as I know, the EU decided that the words "euro" and "cent" should not be pluralised in English in official document - for the sake of homogeneity with other European languages.
Obviously in speech, we have a natural tendency to add an "s", but this is technically incorrect.
For more info, see this document: http://europa.eu.int/comm/economy_finance/...%20and%20symbol

When writing out currencies and amounts, the currency should come first, followed by a space and then the amount, e.g. GBP 25, USD 30, etc.
The standard ISO three-letter abbreviation can be replaced by symbols, e.g. $ for USD, but it must still precede the amount.

Ah the eurocrats strike again
And after all it is incorrect to say "54 million quids"...

Oh, and as someone mentioned, euro is always lower case in English. Similarly, we do not capitalise the words "dollar" or "pound".

It's amazing (and frustrating) to see how frequently these simple rules are broken in publications.

For more information on style, refer to the Chicago Manual of Style or the Economist's style manual.

so it seems the plural is actually euro in English (despite the s being added in French, Spanish and Portugese)

Working for a bank I would use the 3-letter ISO code.
Writing for a newspaper I'd use the € symbol (which of course does not make it "correct").
It depends what Phranco's document is for...

Thanks folks,

I realised that currency NORMALLY is lower-case and with an 's' for plural in english, but there are other exceptions (yen) and I had a feeling the euro would be one as well. Plus the fact that I've been in Germany too long and am only used to seeing it in German.

Anyway thanks, I have decided to go with EUR 54 million. It's not for a bank, but pretty close to it

Mr. Rat: as far as I understand, this rule by created so that the words "euro" and "cent" would sound the same in all languages.

I don't speak Spanish or Portuguese well enough to say, but I do know that even if you add an "s" in French, the words would still still pronounced the same.

I note that the plural in German is Euro, not Euros or Euroen - I assume for the
same reason.

Each language has a different way of expressing plurals and this rule helps to avoid the confusion that would arise if a load of different endings were used to express the same thing.

The following text was copied about a minute ago from the European Commission's website on the euro:

The spelling of the words euro and cent in the plural and singular, as used in official documents such as EU legislation, are set out in the following table.

However, more general usage of these terms may differ in some languages, such as English, where it is natural practice to refer to the currency in the plural form as ‘euros’ instead of the official form ‘euro’. This is the same practice as used with most currencies in English, as in the plural form ‘dollars’.

As I understand it, except for all those times when we are busy drafting EU Directives and the like, we can go on using "euros" to our hearts' content and it won't be wrong.

@Anemone,
Incidentally, "euro" and "cent" certainly don't sound the same in all EU languages, nor are their endings the same, whatever rule Brussels chooses to edict.
Or maybe you'd like to tell the Slovenes, among others, to change their language pronto?

Rarely use the symbols € $ £ ¥ at work (where we work in several currencies) but always EUR GBP USD JPY and the like. Much less room for confusion.

There was a huge discussion and fight over the Euro symbol and pronunciation stardting in 1996 with the finalisation of the name and release of the symbol. If you're actually interested in it, go to Michael Everson's site. Who's Michael Everson? One of the world's formost authorities on anything ot do with computers and typography.

You should read his open letter to the Minister for Finance from 2002. Very informative.

Basically, the idea was that all countries should call the "euro" and "cent" the same thing. France can't call it an "ecu" and Austria can't call it a "marko". However, there are a few linguistic problems with this, including how Irish Gaelic handles plurals. Also, Greece gets to call the cent a "lepto". Why? Good question. The Finns get to add the -iä, -t, -a, and -i endings that their language's grammar demand and yet the EU Council thinks that English can't do the same.

On top of that, the European Translation department specifically said to use the two words in the singlular form for plural usage only when translating legal documents or when the speaker says it that way. Otherwise, add -s.

Everson got a couple responses, the best from Pat Cox, President of the European Parliament:


So go ahead and add the -s to your plurals. Unless you're writing a legal document for the EU.

woof.

Don't give a monkey's what you call it... just as long as I got it in me hands.

Kay - You misunderstand me. Maybe I didn't make myself clear but I what I meant was that precisely because "euro" and "cent" don't sound the same in all EU languages, nor are their endings the same, the EU created this non-pluralization rule to minimise the scope for confusion/differences in all the various euro-zone countries.
At least that's how I understand it.

As for the Solvenes, what's your point? As far as I know, they are not even part of the euro zone (yet).

Except that it doesn't apply to most languages. Scandinavian languages add the definite article to the end of the word and Dutch does, too. Danish and Swedish both change it. Spanish adds -s as does French. Portuguese adds -s in nominative as well as plural with definite article. Finnish changes all forms with their strange grammar.

Two languages don't follow the "rules" for "cent" even in the singular nominative case: In Finnish it's "sentti" and in Greek it's "lepto".

While the two words don't change in German, this is natural to the languge which doesn't change many nouns in the plural case.

Not adding -s to English plurals is linguistically incorrect. There are only few exceptions (animals including antelope, buffalo, deer, elk, pike, sheep, salmon, trout -- but "fish" is tricky) and all of them are based in Old English since they were neuter nouns of the 'a' declension with a long vowel or diphthong which had identical singular
and plural nominative and accusative forms, such as "deor'', "eolh" and "sceap". It may be this reason it doesn't feel wrong to say them to native English speakers.

This isn't the case with "euro" and certainly not with "cent". The rules of our language's roots in Norse, Old Germanic, Latin and French demand the -s ending (a method of ending plurals we got, by the way, via French/Normans).

woof.

No it doesn’t.


Course they do. Otherwise they couldn’t say „the euro“

They have to, because a partitive is required after a cardinal number (greater than one)


This is true but has less to do with „many nouns“ than with units in general. Currencies don’t change anyway. It was always „zwei Mark“ whereas it has never been *“two pound“.

True: I sense some googling here


But this is still a generalisation to which I cannot subscribe, at least not in the way you formulate it.
The productive plural form (i.e. the way that plurals of words new to the language are formed) is with the „-s“ ending


Nope. Now you’re fishing about and have stopped googling.
Latin accusative plurals of the more common declensions did indeed use an –s.
(Old) Norse? No. If you want to generalise here then use an –r.
French? They may write an „s“ but do they pronounce it?
And how can these roots demand the -s ending nowadays?

Another possibility is :
EUR 54 million.

UA I think that's what he plumped for in the end anyway. Proves your good taste

And as for the different pronunciation argument: this is why I couldn't understand why they chose the name "euro" in the first place. It's hard to conceive of a name that could be pronounced in more different ways around the continent than this. To me the plural/partitive/postpositive definite article argument is but a drop in the ocean compared to the name itself.

You weren't Humphrey in a former life were you Jeeves?

What about yen for example, bringing it right back to other currencies. We also don't add an -s for plural and that's definitely not an old english word

Oops I must have got confused reading the whole thread.
I prefer E54 million anyway. (the E being a euro symbol)

@BadDoggie + Jeeves
Thank you for writing those detailed (not to mention well-researched and extensively annotated) explanations.

@Anemone
I'm afraid you're right, your post wasn't at all clear.
As for the Slovenes (not "Solvenes"), I simply chose Slovenia as an example of a new EU member (and probable future member of the euro zone) with an "exotic" language in which the supposed "euro/cent" rule doesn't apply. In Slovenian the currency is called the "evro" (with a "v"), and the plural would be "evra" because all cardinal numbers greater than one require a partitive - just like in Finnish, thank you Jeeves...

@Jeeves
As for the "s" in French plurals, it's voiced quite often, actually. For a start, the "s" in the definite article "les" is pronounced whenever the noun it precedes begins with a vowel or a mute "h" (les écoles, les enfants, les hommes, etc.). Plus when a plural noun ending in "s" (or "x", as some do) or some verb forms ending in "s" are followed by a word beginning with a vowel or a mute "h". And that's an awful lot of words...

Japanese words don't change between singular and plural, viz one key, two key, many key, lots of key, more key. We accept and adopt the native foreign usage.

The word "euro", however, is not foreign, per se. It was designed specifically to work in the majority of languages and still there are exceptions for almost every language... except English.

For comparison, before the euro we had "eine Mark" and "hundert Mark" while in English it was "one Mark" and "one hundred Marks". And "francs." We did accept "lira" in both singular and plural, but again, it goes to the feel which is based in our language's Norse and Anglo-Saxon roots. Native speakers feel it, foreigners never grasp it.

woof.

Bad Dog: now you're back on form. Don't feel like arguing with that post

Kay: if Slovenian is like other Slavic languages then it would be what is formally called the genitive after cardinals (although the usage is of course partitive). Just quibbling about names here aren't I, but then it is early in the morning...
I'm not going to argue with your French bit, so to speak. I was of course generalising to the point of superficiality. French is in fact a very interesting language when it comes to phonemics, but I sense myself wandering far away from this thread's topic...

Jeeves: We could always start another, but for me it is a bit early in the morning. I'd need some more coffee first...

I'm still tanking up on coffein at the moment
Yeah we could start another thread, although (1) it would have little relevance to Munich so would find its way into MRC and thus at some stage into oblivion, and (2) I really ought to do some work some time this month...

Edit: oops, it's "caffein" in English. Call myself a linguist.

Native speakers' speach varies quite a lot based on geographic location and/or social status. In Ireland (the only english speaking country to actually use the currency), both "euro" and "euros" are used as the plural.

It is quite common in parts of the country to hear someone say something like "that cost me 20 euro". Then again, it was quite common in the past in Ireland to say "that cost me 20 pound".
The plural of euro, pound and quid is the same as the singular. In the case of quid, it is not limited to Ireland. I'm pretty sure the british also say "20 quid"

There was a big debate about this in Ireland as well. In the end, people just say what they are most comfortable with, and ignore the linguistic police. Personally I use the plural form without the "s" (i.e. ten euro).

no it isn't

I was only referring to usage in parts of Ireland. And admitedly some would frown on this usage as being "rural" (i.e. culchie/mucker).

Of course it is:
One quid, two quid, three quid...

Wait till you get to GBP 6, or an ill octopus, as it's known. (Sick squid)

Never mind ...

so do u write it as USD 3000 or $3000 in a sentence?

The US dollar sign always precedes the number:
"They transferred $3000 out of my bank account."

If it's necessary to distinguish a US dollar from another, you normally precede the symbol with "US":
According to my mate in Sydney, US$3000 will only get me about A$3900; two years ago it was worth A$4500.

Canadian dollars are usually written "C$" or "$123 CAD" but USD is rarely used except when talking about the currency itself (as an abstract).

woof.

it depends on your target audience. "we" only use the symbol (for example, € $ A$) in marketing materials where there is a reference to annual sales or the like. usually we do this: USD 3,000 or EUR 3,323.
AND
the plural of euro is euros (if this was already mentioned, then sorry). merriam-webster dictionary allows the plural without an s, but prefers it with. the european commission "has decreed that the plural in legal documents is euro, but prefers the use of euros in texts for a wider readership" (i'm quoting our S&Gs). same goes for cents.
i have spoken.