From: Thomas Chan (tc31@cornell.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 08 2003 - 06:15:52 EDT
On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, Philippe Verdy wrote:
> 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)...
But what does one do for a script like Han characters where those tests
don't apply? e.g., in Chinese, U+938A is used for 'pound'--is that a
word, or a currency sign? U+5713 or U+5143 for 'yuan'? Etc.
Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu
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