From: Patrick Andries (pandries@iti.qc.ca)
Date: Tue Oct 01 2002 - 12:17:15 EDT
----- Message d'origine -----
De : "Ben Monroe" <bendono@attbi.com>
> - the yen currency began in 1871
And written as such since 1871 in French accord to my Dictionnaire
historique de la langue française which writes « est l'adaptation (1871)
d'un mot japonais dont la transcription normale serait èn, lui-même du
chinois yüan « rond, cercle » et aussi « dollar » (en tant que monnaie
ronde). »
> - there are many foreign languages that have common words with the same
> spelling as "en", so there was a need to avoid this. French and Spanish
> has an "en" meaning "inside (something)"
True even though French could use an accent (as in sample above) to
disambiguate (en is a single nasal sound, èn is not). I'm not sure that the
French and Spanish had much influence on the transcription of Japanese
(English, Dutch or Portuguese maybe).
> and Dutch has an "en" meaning
> "and then". [I really do not know. I am just repeating what it says
> there.]
In Dutch « en » simply means « and » (or « both .... and »); there is no
more a connation of « then » than in English.
P. Andries
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