From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Fri Dec 31 2004 - 13:46:57 CST
At 13:23 +0100 2004-12-31, Lars Kristan wrote:
>I am not sure it is as simple as that. AFAIK, EU
>is trying to enforce some rules about the Euro
>spelling.
Error 1: The word "euro" is not capitalized in
English any more than "dollar" or "pound" are
(except of course at the beginning of sentences).
Error 2: The original Council Directive that the
name of the currency should be the same in all
languages except for the alphabet. This would
prevent a country from deciding to call it
"ducet" or "ecu" or "sheqel" or "mark".
>Namely, they want it to always start with "EURO"
>even if a certain country uses different
>suffixes in declensions.
Error 3: This was in order to preserve
typographical simplicity on the banknotes.
Error 4: It was the people in the Commission and
in national governments themselves who botched
this up and somehow it got taken that the words
would be "immune" to natural orthography or
grammar.
>Similarly, I suppose EU might be wanting
>Bulgaria to use Öìêé, since it transliterates to
>EURO, while ÖÇêé transliterates to EVRO.
Please see
http://www.evertype.com/standards/euro/euro-eora-en.pdf
and
http://www.evertype.com/standards/euro/open-letter.pdf
as well as other articles at
http://www.evertype.com/standards/euro/ for more
information.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_issues_concerning_the_euro
-- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
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