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Euro Or Eora? Cent Or Ceint? the New Currency and Ireland

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Euro Or Eora? Cent Or Ceint? the New Currency and Ireland Euro or eora? Cent or ceint? The new currency and Ireland Michael Everson Œ A SINGLE CURRENCY, which has been of endeavour to be internal to the countries of named in the English language the euro, and the EU, and thus to be outside the scope of the whose decimal subdivision is called the cent, has European Council’s powers of direction. We been introduced by the monetary union of a will see below that linguistic argument alone number of member states of the European will show that the directives of the Council Union. Of interest in multilingual Europe are cannot be implemented justly, given the the different ways in which these new words European linguistic situation. will be adapted to the pronunciation, grammar, and spelling requirements of European lan- BORROWING guages, whether these languages be official EU NEW VOCABULARY languages, other languages of the countries adopting the new currency as their national In general, when a new word is introduced to a currency, or other languages used elsewhere in language, it is changed according to relevant Europe. phonetic criteria. English speakers borrowed Rather than requesting the input of its the Czech word robot, but adapted it to English member states with regard to the proper use of pronunciation ([·rÿÜbOt] not [·robot]) and the currency’s name in their languages, the grammar (pl. robots not roboty). The Arabic European Council has surprisingly decreed word ‹ (qahwa) was borrowed via a variety that the spelling of the currency and of its of routes into a number of naturalized forms by subunit shall be identical in all official lan- the languages of Europe: kafe (Basque); cafè guages of the EU.1 It has also directed that the (Catalan); kaffe (Danish); koffie (Dutch); coffee plural and the singular of the words euro and (English); kahv (Estonian); kahvi (Finnish); café cent shall be identical in a number of these (French); (qava – Georgian); Kaffee (Ger- languages. man); ηʤ˜ (kafés – Greek); kávé (Hungarian); It is difficult to summarize the far-reaching kaffi (Icelandic); caife (Irish); caffè (Italian); káffe consequences such directives would have (Northern Sami); kawa (Polish); café (Portu- should they be accepted by legislators or lay- guese); кофе (kofe – Russian); kava (Slovene); persons in Europe. They violate the principle café (Spanish); kaffe (Swedish); kahve (Turkish); of subsidiarity, which guarantees certain realms coffi (Welsh). In each of these languages, the 1 See Directive (EC) No. 1103/97 of 17 June 1997 languages of the European Union, taking into account from the European Council: Whereas … the the existence of different alphabets.… This Regulation European Council furthermore considered that the name shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in of the single currency must be the same in all the official all Member States. © 2001 Michael Everson. First published in Irish in An Aimsir Óg 2001, vol 2. Baile Átha Cliath: Coiscéim. ISSN 1393-9351. 1 word has been assigned its appropriate gender The simplest thing to do to derive the name of and/or declension. the currency would be to clip the end off of the The name of the new European currency name of the continent – as is done in Danish, and its subdivision are not given to us ex nihilo. Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, The name of the subdivision is a truncation of Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. According to the Latin word centum ‘100’, and has been used the European Council’s Directive (EC) No. as a subdivision of other currencies, such as the 1103/97, however, the spelling of the name of Australian, Canadian, Hong Kong, New the currency must be euro. Does this really Zealand, and US dollars (cent), and the imply that the forms eiro, eora, evro, evró, and Estonian kroon (sent). Many languages have a ewro are not “allowed”? pre-existing form of this word already in use. The banknotes will bear the text ÿŸ⁄¤ and The currency name is a truncation of the ÿÕfiœ in two different scripts, Latin and name of the continent. The form of the name Greek. One may presume that Cyrillic ÿ›fi¤ of the continent has a number of spellings and would also appear, should Macedonian, pronunciations in different languages: Russian, Serbian, or Ukrainian become official EU languages. Will Armenian –—“” and Eiropa [·ejropa] Latvian Georgian ‘’÷◊ also be “allowed”? What Eoraip [·jU\Vÿpj] Irish about Belarusian ÿflfi¤? Eurohpa [·eurohpa] Sami One may note with interest that in the Eurooppa [·euro:ppa] Finnish former Soviet Union, national languages were Europa [øw·Ro:pa] Danish respected, allowing the Union Republics to use [Oy·Ropa] German entirely different words, spellings, and declen- [eu·rOpa] Italian sions for the national currency. On a 1961 Portuguese three-ruble note, as can be seen below, the [eu·ropa] Dutch following forms all appear – grammatically Spanish these are the forms that follow the number 3 in Európa [eu·ro:pa] Hungarian the respective languages: rubla (Estonian); rubl,i Europe [·jÜÿ®ÿp] English (Latvian); rubliai (Lithuanian); карбованці [ø·Rop] French (karbovanci – Ukrainian); манат (manat – Evropa [Ev·ropa] Swedish Azeri, Turkmen); рублe (ruble – Moldavian); Evrópa [Ev·roÜpa] Icelandic рублі (rubli – Belarusian); рубля (rublja – Ewrop [eu·rUp] Welsh Russian); сом (som – Kazakh, Kyrgyz); су¯ м (su¯m ∂˘ÚÒ· (Eyrópa)[Ev·ro:pa] Greek – Tajik); су˘м (su˘m – Uzbek); (roublu – вропа (Evropa)[ev·ropa] Bulgarian Armenian); (maneti – Georgian). [jiv·ropÿ] Russian Slovenians are at present “permitted” to use ўропа (Eu˘ ropa)[ew·ropa] Belarusian their natural spelling evro. Does it follow from (Evropa)[jEv·ropa] Armenian the Directive that on their accession to EU (evropa)[Ev·ropa] Georgian membership, they will be required to change their spelling? What then would be the poten- tial social and economic cost of such a change- 2 SINGULAR AND PLURAL That the Directive requires that the plural form of the currency name – at least when combined with a figure – should remain unchanged naïvely assumes that all languages do, or can, treat nouns following numbers in the same way. In reality, however, this grammatical environment is particularly rich over, in terms of the necessary revision of ele- where European languages are concerned. In mentary educational materials, dictionaries and many European languages, it is true, the encyclopaediae, electronic spell-checkers, re- nominative plural is used with numbers above education of users, and so on? 1. In Celtic languages, however, a digit is followed by a noun in its singular, usually with IDEOGRAPHS initial consonant mutation caused by the digit preceding. In Russian, the numbers 2, 3, and 4 Such questions arise from the assumption are followed by the genitive singular, and implicit in the European Council’s Directive numbers from 5 on are followed by the genitive which takes no cognizance of either socio- plural. In Estonian and Finnish, the partitive linguistic or ordinary linguistic reality – that singular is used with numbers greater than 1. the written form of the currency name must be The European Council’s Directive goes far constant and unchanged, as though the four beyond the scope of its powers, in that it im- letters were equivalent in an ideographic sense pinges upon the grammar of natural languages. to the abstract currency symbol – note that “$” The Finns refused to accept the Directive. means both dollar and peso – or to a digit – one Nominative singular: euro, sentti; nominative sees “2” but says [erkowk‘], bi, dos, to, plural: eurot, sentit; partitive singular: euroa, twee, two, kaks, kaksi, deux, [ori], zwei, ‰‡Ô senttiä. In Italy, there are two factions: those [dy´o], ketto˝, tveir, a dó, due, guokte, dwa, dois, два who consider the correct plural of l’euro to be [dva], dva, dos, två, iki, dwy…. gli euro (following the Directive), and those What has been ignored are two simple who consider the correct plural to be gli euri. facts. One, that European languages have The latter group includes l'Accademia della orthographies which are based on the conven- Crusca, the most important normative institu- tional values of the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic tion for the Italian language. letters as adapted to those languages, and two, Let us consider the problem we have in that languages which employ alphabetic Ireland with the European Council’s Directive. writing systems generally do not treat strings of As is reflected in the English of the Economic letters as ideographs, independent of the and Monetary Union Act, 1998, and in the Irish normal reading rules. of the Acht um Aontas Eacnamaíoch agus Airgeadaíochta, 1998, the State has accepted the Directive. In the former, the terms euro and 3 cent are used invariantly, ignoring the normal plural formation in -s which is natural to the English language. From section 11(1) of the Act: The Minister may provide coins denomi- nated in euro or in cent.… Let us assume for a moment that the pound were being established as Ireland’s currency. The text would not read denominated in pounds or in pence according to the Act above, but would rather read denominated in pound or in penny. Likewise, if the dollar were being established as Ireland’s currency, denominated in dollar or in cent would be used instead of denominated in dollars or in cents. Why then should the text of the Act not read denominated From a poster by the Euro Changeover Board of Ireland. in euros or in cents, that is, in standard English? dollar and the cent, we would expect sa phunt nó What we see is that, in the English version of sa phingin, or sa dhollar nó sa cheint (cf. Tomás de the Act, the nouns euro and cent have been Bhaldraithe, English-Irish Dictionary, 1959, s.v.
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