Language and the euro

In official documents, the name "euro" must be used for the nominative singular in all languages, though different alphabets are taken into account and plural forms and declensions are accepted.

In documents other than EU legal texts, including national legislation, other spellings are accepted according to the various grammatical rules of the respective language.

Bulgaria on the other hand stated that it wants to take into account the different alphabet and the principle of phonetic orthography in the Bulgarian language.

The spelling differs from the Czech word for Europe (Evropa); however "euro-" has become a standard prefix for all things relating to the EU (Evropská unie).

The Czech declension uses different form of plural for various numerals: for 2, 3 and 4, it is plain nominative eura and centy, while for numbers above 5, genitive (a vestige of partitive) eur and centů is used.

Danish words of Greek origin containing the sequence eu are traditionally pronounced with [œʊ̯], e.g. Zeus, terapeut, eutanasi, Europa.

The term euro-cent is sometimes used[citation needed] in countries (such as Australia, Canada, and the United States) which also have "cent" as a currency subdivision, to distinguish them from their local coin.

Initial letter C is often used in loanwords and corresponds to various pronunciations depending on the language of origin (e.g. [s] in Centime, [tʃ] in Cello, [ts] in Celsius and [k] in Café).

[41] The Deutsche Mark was worth half as much as the euro (a ratio of approximately 2:1) and some grocers and restaurants were accused of taking advantage of the smaller numbers to increase their actual prices with the changeover.

In youth and Internet culture the fake plural Euronen is sometimes used; this form's origin is unknown but it bears resemblance to Dublonen (doubloons) and has a retro ring to it.

It was decided to use omega (ω) rather than omicron (ο) as the last letter of the word, partly because a noun ending with omicron would encourage mutability, and partly to stress the origin of the euro in the Greek word Ευρώπη (Eurōpē, Europe) which is also spelt with omega and it is actually written on the euro notes in Greek as ΕΥΡΩ.

Also, the spelling ΕΥΡΟ (resulting in a plural ΕΥΡΑ) on the notes could have confused other Europeans, who might read it as a string of Latin letters: eypo.

Hungarian language does not use plural after numerals, as numerals already express plural; however, both euró and cent can take suffixes regarding to grammatical cases, just as: On introduction of the euro, Hungary—along with Lithuania, Latvia, and Slovenia—struggled for the euro to be written in its official documents according to its own usage and spelling, in contrast with Community law, which provides for a single name throughout the Union (in the nominative singular and taking account of different alphabets).

Declaration by the Republic of Latvia, the Republic of Hungary and the Republic of Malta on the spelling of the name of the single currency in the Treaties Without prejudice to the unified spelling of the name of the single currency of the European Union referred to in the Treaties as displayed on the banknotes and on the coins, Latvia, Hungary and Malta declare that the spelling of the name of the single currency, including its derivatives as applied throughout the Latvian, Hungarian and Maltese text of the Treaties, has no effect on the existing rules of the Latvian, Hungarian or Maltese languages.

[53] The issue of whether the correct plural form would be euri or euro remained open for a long time, predating the actual introduction of the currency.

The Accademia della Crusca assigned to Severina Parodi, lexicographer, and to Luca Serianni, language historian, the task to give a response.

In 2002 an amendment to the financial act was proposed to adopt euri as the plural form for public official deeds, but was quickly rejected by the Parliament.

Cent only appears on documents such as electricity and telephone bills; it is perceived by native speakers as an abbreviation of "centesimo" (and in fact often followed by a period) rather than as an autonomous proper name.

They explained that the use of euro (and cent without nominative ending) is ill-suited to the language because an eu diphthong does not exist in Latvian, and orthographic rules discourage spellings that don't reflect pronunciation.

In Brazil the pronunciation is [ˈewɾu] (generally [ˈeu̯ɾu] in Rio de Janeiro and further north, as in Portugal, and [ˈeʊ̯ɾʊ] in São Paulo and further south and west as well as the places where southern Brazilians settled) and fractional values are called centavos de euro[64] (cents of euro) to differentiate them from Brazilian real "centavos".

Slang terms: common nicknames for euro in Slovak includes: euráče, evri, juráše, éčka (literally "e"-s or "letters ‘e’").

Slang terms: the euro is often referred to as pavo, meaning turkey in English (the usual translation for buck in dubbed films).

Since the inventor of the name "euro" Germain Pirlot is an Esperantist it is often assumed that he intentionally chose a word that fits well into the Esperanto grammar.

The official name of the currency established by the Academy of the Hebrew Language and the Bank of Israel is אֵירוֹ‎ [ˈeʁo],[74] derived from אֵירוֹפָּה‎ [eˈʁopa] (Europe).

This gets especially applied to "currencies, weights and measurements that don't belong to the metric system" (according to KGD, Kompleta Gramatiko Detaloza – Ido's grammar book).

In Interslavic, the diphthongs /au/ and /eu/ are generally written as av and ev, which is common in Slovene, Sorbian and (usually) the Slavic languages that use Cyrillic.

In Japanese the euro is called "yūro" (ユーロ) based on the English pronunciation, using the katakana syllabary employed for foreign words.

In Russian, just like in Bulgarian, euro is spelt евро ("jevro", pronounced [ˈjevrə]) both in the singular and the plural, while cent is цент [t͡sɛnt] (sg.)

Just as in Italian, although евро could have been declined as a regular neuter noun, it was made indeclinable like many neutral loanwords ending in a vowel: бюро [bʲʊˈro] bureau, office, writing-desk, пальто [pɐlʲˈto] overcoat, бордо [bɐrˈdo] Bordeaux wine, claret etc.

They are inflected according to regular rules of the language: The genitive plural centi is produced in an old-fashioned way that is today mostly reserved for measurement units.