Re: Spam : Re: ISO 10646 compliance and EU law

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Fri Dec 31 2004 - 13:39:49 CST

  • Next message: Doug Ewell: "[OT] Re: Spam : Re: ISO 10646 compliance and EU law"

    From: Patrick Andries
    >> Similarly, I suppose EU might be wanting Bulgaria to use ЕУРО, since it
    >> transliterates to EURO, while ЕВРО
    >> transliterates to EVRO.
    >> Brussels is meddling again and wanting to have a single size fit all.
    >
    > For real multilingual banknotes (when it did not mean some logotype
    > language) see :
    > http://hapax.ifrance.com/hapax/billets-de-banque.htm

    Well this already concerns other countries outside of the EMU.
    For example, this swiss site (in French) displays the various denominations
    in the current 11 official languages of the ECB...
    http://www.frc.ch/dossiers/euro/3.html
    (but it forgets that the subdivision, the "cent", can have its name changed
    legally.

    For example, in French, the term "cent" would normally not be pronouced
    "sènn't" but "sã", because it is homograph to the term designating the
    number 100; as it can cause confusion when spelling or even writing money
    amounts (for example "dix neuf cents": is it 1900€, or 10,09€ or 0,19€ ?)
    when so many people do not know that the "cent" numeral for 100 has no
    plural form, and don't like saying "sènn't" which is too much connotated to
    the dollar.)

    So the official term in France is not "cent" but preferably "centime" (the
    same term that was used for the subdivision of the French Franc), and
    "eurocentime" was also used for the short period when both currencies were
    legal. Today, eveybody says "centime" (even if European texts and the
    europa.eu.int web site say that only the terms "cent" plural "cents" should
    be used, this applies for cross-border transactions and texts, and to minted
    coins, but not in France for all commercial transactions and advertizing...)

    So if countries can freely adopt, for their internal use, the orthographies
    they want, why would this be a problem if Bulgarian prefer writing EBPO
    instead of EYPO? For international transactions, like all others, they will
    use the term "Euro" or the symbol.

    Same thing in Greece for the "leptó"... or in Italian for the name prefixed
    with a numeral; another notable exception: in English, the "cent" takes no
    plural form... officially... And there's no legal symbol for the cent (the
    only legal symbol when writing it is for the euro, which then requires the 2
    decimals for small amounts.

    More important: official texts say clearly that banknotes MUST be the same
    across all countries. Adding new spalling will be possible for legal texts,
    but banknotes will not be changed throughout Europe immediately.
    In some future, new banknotes may be designed and then will progressively
    replace the old ones, but it's not for now. There are already enough
    banknotes for the newcomers in 3 years, but the current models will be
    printed as is to cover their transition needs.

    It's highly probable that the first banknotes that will be replaced the
    fastest will be the 5 and 10 euros notes. But old notes will remain legal
    for a long time (at least 10 years, even more for some countries that have
    not set any deadline for their previous national banknotes...). The 200€ and
    500€ banknotes will not disappear easily because they are used in bank
    reserves worldwide for the street change market, and their transportation is
    too risky and too costly.

    Finally, I already read that the banknotes would not be adapted to support
    all the european languages. What allows their distinction is their color,
    their numeral and their symbol. using too many translations would obscure
    the recognizable security features that help limiting counterfeight...



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