Re: When is a character a currency sign?

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Tue Jul 08 2003 - 04:45:19 EDT

  • Next message: Alexandros Diamantidis: "Re: [OT] When is a character a currency sign?"

    On Tuesday, July 08, 2003 3:35 AM, Thomas Chan <tc31@cornell.edu> wrote:
    > On Mon, 7 Jul 2003, Philippe Verdy wrote:
    > Would "Euro" also be a (four-character) currency sign?

    Certainly not: this would be a word, whose orthograph varies with language.
    See the banknotes, where it is written in Greek letters, the capitalization also changes with language or context (all uppercase on banknotes, lowercase in normal French text, titlecase in German), as well as the plural forms according to language rules.

    We could say the same thing about the terms "dollar", "pound"/"livre", "mark", "escudo", "peseta", "yen", "yuan", "ruppie"/"roupie", "sucre"... (see also the Japanese Kana square characters created for these terms: they are not really currency signs, but an orthographic representation of these names adapted to a script, mostly like a transliteration)...



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