From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Sun Jan 02 2005 - 09:37:24 CST
Doug Ewell wrote:
>Philippe Verdy <verdy underscore p at wanadoo dot fr> wrote:
>
>
>
>>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...)
>>
>>
>
>The UK went through this in the early '70s, as the "penny" (1/240 of a
>pound) was replaced by the "new penny" (1/100 of the same pound), then
>the "old" penny was demonetized and the new penny became known as simply
>the "penny."
>
>
Israel had its share of that... First there was the Lira, which was
divided into 100 agorot. Then the Sheqel, divided into 100 "new
agorot". One Sheqel=10 Lira (Apparently they always wanted the currency
to be called Sheqel from day one, but started with the lira/pound for
some reason). Then in a bold effort to combat inflation by clever use
of decimal points, the currency was changed again, to the "New Sheqel",
divided into... 100 agorot (not "new agorot" anymore, but I guess the
old ones were sufficiently old not to count). 1 New Sheqel=1000
Sheqel. Though everyone just calls it "Sheqel" or sometimes (I *think*
I've heard) "shach", which is a pronunciation of the abbreviation ש״ח,
standing for "sheqel chadash"/new sheqel. Hence also the symbol, ₪,
which is designed to resemble a shin and chet interlinked (often the
abbreviation is used instead of the symbol, too).
'Course, since nothing costs in agorot, nobody really cares whether
they're new or old agorot. Kind of like knowing how many mills there
are in a cent: very few care.
~mark
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