osh, readies, loot, bread, dough, spondulix ... what Your do all these words have in common? The answer is that they are some of the myriad slang names for the or your wife cash in our pocket/bank/building society/offshore D The Republic of Cameroon used to use Bafia potato mashers as trust. Bread comes from Cockney rhyming slang (bread and cash. Curiouser still was the notion that the operators of these honey = money) and dough is presumably derived from bread. implements (the wives) were worth the princely (or princess-ly) Spondulix comes from the Greek word for a shell, an early form sum of 30 mashers, although what someone would actually do of money – but more on that later. with that many potato mashers is anyone’s guess – perhaps buy So what is money? Basically, it is anything that people more wives and start a chip-making factory? will accept in payment for goods and services. And by that, I mean anything! You can’t eat money – Cash cows or can you? In the beginning, trade was carried out communally – people So what makes something good for use as money? The value of presumably returning favour with favour. One crucial element of things has always been based on rarity. The more exclusive a this process was, of course, food – it would have been of no use thing, the more desirable it is (generally speaking – common sense to early society to undertake a whole round of swapping things and political honesty being two exceptions). only to end up with a freshly carved dolmen, however imposing it was a symbol of wealth in its heyday as a precious substance might be! which was difficult to obtain, and it has long been used as a form of I imagine that the earliest exchanges were of various foodstuffs, throughout the world, being the primary currency in East either plants or animals – in fact, one important unit of trade for Africa throughout the Middle Ages. The word salary is derived from the Latin word salarium, which denoted a Roman soldier’s allowance several thousand years (around 10,000 to 6,000 bc) was the cow. Being useful for milk, for meat and for its hide, a cow was of great for buying salt. A soldier who performed well was ‘worth his salt’. value to its owner, and it is unsurprising that the concept of wealth Another form of edible currency was Parmigiano cheese. At quickly arose. Doubtless many primitive boasts along the lines of one point, this beloved cheese was actually accepted as bank ‘My father’s got more cows than yours!’ were heard. collateral in Italy. Just as well that ripe Camembert wasn’t in the Cows, like bank balances today, do require maintenance same category, although the smell of a long-term might – food and the like. As herds of money grew, so increasingly grain have deterred many a bank robber … and other feeds came into the equation and in their turn became One particularly inedible currency was once used in Burma: currency, initially on the or exchange system. poisonous seeds. The old habit of biting a to check that it is genuine was presumably not common there. Cash cowries Is that a daler Other early forms of currency included shells – easier to maintain than livestock (and cheaper to run, unless you stood on one). The in your pocket ...? cowrie was a favourite in a number of societies, notably China, Some of the earliest forms of coin were bronze and copper from about 1,200 bc. In fact, these shells were used as currency in representations of the cowrie shells previously used in China. some societies as recently as the 20th century. These appeared around 1,000 bc and developed into primitive One of the less obvious forms of early currency was a versions of the round familiar today. Made of base metals, foot-square piece of white deerskin with coloured borders. This they often had holes so they could be put together in a chain. must have made carrying any quantity of cash around a tricky Some 500 years later, the first coins outside China appeared in operation, both from the weight and the vulnerability point of view! Lydia (part of present-day Turkey). These were quickly copied and In the Middle Ages, the Russians used squirrel pelts as refined by the Greek, Persian, Macedonian and, later, the Roman currency, with the added refinement of using the claws as small empires. Coins started to be made from precious metals such as change. In Finland, these pelts are still apparently valued – at silver and gold. three cents each. Coinage was, of course, heavy and cumbersome to carry about

50 • Issue 103 March 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com • – and nowhere was this more true than in Sweden, which had few America, there were some strange denominations. For example, precious metals, but an abundance of copper. As a result, the in the 1770s, Maryland had a 1/9th dollar bill. at this Swedes issued huge copper coins, called platmynt or plate money, time were often hand-signed, with a hand-written serial number. in the 17th and 18th centuries. The coins contained their full face Back then, being treasurer of the national bank was hard work! value of copper, so a ten-daler coin weighed 44 pounds (20 kilos). There was also a 2/9th dollar bill and a 1/3rd dollar bill. At the Even the four-daler coins were around two kilos, and measured other end of the scale, the biggest American ever 20 cm by 25 cm. Big and deep pockets required! released was the orange $100,000 dollar bill. This does, however, pale into insignificance beside the world-record denomination Cash and carry – banknote issued in inflation-ridden Hungary circa 1946: the 100 million billion pengo note. That is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 or not! pengos – sadly, for all the impressive noughts, it was worth all of around 20 US cents. I have already mentioned early coinage being heavy and Modern banknotes are made from ‘rag paper’, which is cumbersome – the ‘rai stones’ from the island of in the composed of cotton and linen fibres (unlike normal paper, which western Pacific Ocean were perhaps the most extreme form. is made from the cellulose found in trees). This adds weight to the These gargantuan stones, with a hole in the middle, were each saying that money doesn’t grow on trees! carved from a single piece of , measuring up to 12 feet across and weighing over eight tons. Since the creation of each stone was such a massive undertaking, the difficulty experienced Novelty money along the way would increase its value. What must the yak-herding descendants of Genghis Kahn The villagers risked their lives canoeing to the neighbouring have thought when they first encountered the 2007 Mongolian island of , where the necessary limestone could be found. 500 Tugrik coin, flipped it over and discovered a portrait of Then the disks had to be carved and painstakingly carried back to US President John F Kennedy? Even more bizarre, when they the village (again, via canoe). Once back in the village, none of the pressed a tiny button on JFK’s chest, they would have heard an stones ever moved again since they were so heavy; they just extract from his famous ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech. The chances acquired new owners from time to time and remained in the same are that we’ll never know, since collectors quickly snatched up location. On one occasion, one of the canoes returning to Yap most of these oddities – which may have been the sole reason for sank, but the stone that was lost was still considered a part of the producing them in the first place. Nevertheless, Kennedy is still economy. The islanders just recognised the stone as being out in well-respected in Mongolia for launching the Peace Corps. the ocean, and ‘ownership’ of it changed in the usual way. If a villager died in the process of carving or transporting a stone, which was not uncommon, its value increased. Because of Electronic money the significant amount of time and effort put into each stone, In our digital age, economic transactions regularly take place transfers from one villager to the next could only be done electronically, without the exchange of any physical currency at following an elaborate ceremony. all. Digital cash has even developed in a stand-alone form: the bitcoin, which some might think is taking the search for the light From rags to riches and convenient to an absurd degree ... Eventually, alternatives to bulky coinage were sought, and the Chinese – front-runners in the development of currency – instigated the use of Money, money, money paper banknotes. In all, China experienced over 500 years of early There is a photocopiable worksheet about money on page 52, paper money, spanning the ninth to the fifteenth centuries. Over this which you might like to use with your students. period, paper notes grew in production to the point that their value Answers rapidly depreciated and inflation soared. Then, beginning in 1455, the 1 1 b 2 b 3 c 4 a 5 c 6 a 7 b 8 a use of paper money in China disappeared for several hundred years. 2 1 h 2 g 3 a 4 f 5 b 6 e 7 d 8 c This was still many years before paper currency would reappear in Europe, and three centuries before it was considered common. Scrapbook compiled by Ian Waring Green Moves to paper currency weren’t always straightforward – in

• www.etprofessional.com • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue 103 March 2016 • 51 Money, money, money

1 Choose the correct explanation for each of these money idioms.

1 to feed the kitty 7 to pay through the nose a) to have an expensive pet a) to get something cheap b) to contribute money to a special collection b) to pay a high price for something c) to give money to someone who is poor or homeless c) to give someone money even though you dislike them 2 to go Dutch a) to use cheese as a form of currency 8 to take a rain b) to share the cost of a meal a) to promise to accept an invitation at a later date c) to invest in environmental schemes b) to save money in case there are bad times ahead c) to insure your property against flooding 3 to get something for peanuts a) to get something for free b) to pay a high price for something 2 Can you match the currency with the country? c) to pay a low price for something 1 Croatia a Rupiah 4 to make a fast buck 2 Malaysia b Euro a) to earn money quickly, easily and (perhaps) dishonestly 3 Indonesia c Lari b) to trade something other than money for goods and 4 India d Baht services c) to win money by betting on a horse (or dog) race 5 Ireland e Krona

5 a cheapskate 6 Sweden f Rupee a) a form of entertainment that doesn’t cost very much 7 Thailand g Ringgit b) an inexpensive seafood dinner c) a person who doesn’t like spending money 8 Georgia h Kuna

6 to laugh all the way to the bank a) to make money easily by exploiting someone else’s 3 Without looking in your wallet, draw a picture of a naivety banknote from your country. Include as much detail b) to spend lots of money without worrying about the as you can. Show it to a partner and talk about the consequences design of the banknote and any people, objects or c) to be deeply in debt, with little hope of paying back buildings pictured on it. If possible, compare it with your creditors the real thing. How accurate is your drawing?

52 • Issue 103 March 2016 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •