euro or euros

[debemaks]

In Italy it was clearly stated in 2002 that the currency is Euro no matter regarding singular or plural, some people call it "euri" at plural more as nickname than at plural itself.
I head many times "euros" specially when in not €-countries.

[doiknow]

I consider 'Euro' to be a unit like meter or Newton. As there is no plural use of units in german I use the same with euro - without s no matter what amount of money coins or notes.

[claudio vda]

In Dutch we have words (=same word, same spelling) with more than 5 different meanings.
Does such words exits in your language ?

Yes, in Italian it happens. Not very often, but it happens.

An interesting example is in this short poetry of Giovanni Pascoli, where he plays with the "false rhyme" (= two words equals, so you can't call that a rhyme, but with different meaning); of course the english translation changes the sounds of the poetry that is ironical and sad at the same time

Il passato

Rivedo i luoghi dove un giorno ho pianto:
un sorriso mi sembra ora quel pianto.
Rivedo i luoghi, dove ho già sorriso...
Oh! Come lacrimoso quel sorriso


The past

I see again the places where , one day, I cried:
now this crying looks like a smile for me.
I see again the places where I already smiled...
Oh! What a tearful smile!

(I wrote in the same color the words and their translation)

[Dakkus]

How about this one:
remontoin = I renovate
remontoin = I renovated
remontoin = I will renovate

Finnish doesn't have a future tense, so all present and future forms always look the same. But, with the verbs ending with -oida (most of the German -ieren verbs) even the past tense looks the same as the future/present tense

[monikka]

Well, I'll add some info from Slovakia

Word euro should follow Slovak declination rules as the table shows: http://www.euroinfo.gov.sk/index/go.php?id=1615
Many people use only euro in plural, though. I've also seen a TV commercial with the bad form

As far as I know only Slovenian language has more forms within plural. And there is also dual which is unique.

Also other Slavic languages have more forms of plural, we say:
1 € - jedno euro
2,3,4 € - dve, tri, štyri eurá
5,6,... € - päť, šesť,... eur
But dual seems really Slovenian specificity

[Dioniz]

Thank you Monikka for the explanation! I have also one question: is the word euro in Slovak language in neutrum gender?

[melitikus]

I believe there is an official document by the EU asking not to "decline" euro in euros...

Nevertheless, it's the kind of (stupid) eurocratic decision that is too strict...

I believe that having the word euro adopted into the various languages of the EU will help increasing aceptance of the euro...

:

The EU asks to use the term euro in both singular and plural for legislations only. In common text, media, etc, the local term for euro (singular or plural) could be used.

If there was not this rule all the national terms (around 21) for euro would have had to be listed on the banknotes and coins.

[monikka]

Thank you Monikka for the explanation! I have also one question: is the word euro in Slovak language in neutrum gender?

Yes you're right, it's in neuter - to euro, model noun mesto. (Our declension) I see you also have this model noun

[Craft]

In Finnish ... There are words requiring partitive plural too, which would be "euroja" like "paljon euroja" (a lot of euros (funny, in this case also in English plural applies)), but I have the impression that that it is rather avoided in everyday language. Natives please correct me if I'm wrong.

It's not avoided, it just doesn't come up as often in speech as the forms yksi euro, kaksi euroa, kolme euroa etc. which are of course extremely common because they are the basic expressions of prices. In Finnish the word euro is a normal noun and thus gets all the same suffixes as other nouns when needed in sentences. None of the case declensions are more avoided or difficult with euro than any other nouns for native Finnish-speaking people (although some of these cases are nowadays rather rare in Finnish with any nouns).

Euro gets the following forms in singular and plural. I won't include translations this time, the list is only to show that the word euro is easily deflected. Native Finnish-speakers such as myself could easily produce an example sentence of each of these in speech.

Singular / plural:
euro / eurot
euron / eurojen
euroa / euroja
euroksi / euroiksi
eurona /euroina
eurossa / euroissa
eurosta /euroista
euroon / euroihin
eurolla / euroilla
eurolta / euroilta
eurolle / euroille
eurotta / euroitta
euroine- + possessive suffix (similar in singular & plural)
- / euroin (only plural exists for most nouns, this too)

The EU asks to use the term euro in both singular and plural for legislations only.

This cannot be applied to Finnish legislation any better than to other written or spoken Finnish. Such a rule would produce ambiguos and therefore dangerously inexact legislation wordings. - Not that all existing legislation were exact enough even if the language is formally correct, for that matter .

I recall that at the beginning - when euro was decided to become the name of the common currency unit - there were some theoretical considerations if the plural could be the same as the singular in Finnish too. These considerations fortunately dropped dead in no time, because such a practice would never work in Finnish. Native Finnish-speakers instinctively know how to deflect the word and that it is very correct to do so. It is deflected exactly the same way as e.g. the word auto (a car). Everyone would use the declensions even if there were an (utterly stupid) official rule that euro should not be deflected. Euro is a very short word in comparison to most other Finnish words and its declination is very easy. Some much much older native Finnish words occasionally pose more difficulties .

(I have used the expression native Finnish-speakers instead of native Finns, because there are non-Finnish speaking native Finns, for instance Swedish-speaking, Sami-speaking, Romani-speaking, Russian-speaking and many others...)

[CarlosManta]

Euro gets the following forms in singular and plural. I won't include translations this time, the list is only to show that the word euro is easily deflected. Native Finnish-speakers such as myself could easily produce an example sentence of each of these in speech.

Seems very easy indeed...
There is however "official" information from the EU itself on how to spell Euro in different languages (for legislation):
http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/pub ... 336_en.pdf

[doiknow]

Hey that stuff is really interesting regarding the swedish declinations:

1 euro (indefinite singular)
1 cent (indefinite singular)
100 euro (indefinite plural)
100 cent (indefinite)
euron (definite singular)
centen (definite singular)
eurorna (definite plural)
centen (definite plural)

The interesting thing is, there should be no use of a plural form when using more than one cent or euro, while it is totally common to do with the swedish kronor: 1 krone, 2 kronor. Finally the declination of 'cent' in plural seems to be totally irregular. If the indefinite plural form of cent should be 'cent' - i has to be a neutral noun (in contrast to the none neutral euro) thus having endings like -et and -en in definite form: the cent -> centet; the cents -> centen
(I hope I derived corectly from here. Maybe someone of the finnish guys here can check this...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_grammar

My advise to the ECB: Let all the peoples choose their declinations themselves. Buying something in a shop i can see a written 'EUR' or €....

[Dakkus]

You cannot easily see the "genus" of a Swedish word from how the word looks like. They are in any case almost completely separate from genders or similar.
Cent is an en-word, not an ett-word.
It looking similar in plural might be an artificial exception from the rule. The office of Swedish language also has said that "euro" should be pronounced "evro", somehow because they assume the word is derived from some ancient greek/latin word instead of word Europa. The people, however, assume it to be a cut form of Europa and also pronounce it as "euro".
There's a swede sitting just 5 meters away, but she's currently in a bit of a hurry with her work. Gotta come editing this text once I've asked her to cojugate words euro and cent in plural modus.

a car = en bil
a cent = en cent
the car = bilen
the cent = centen

EDIT:
The output I heard from the mouth of a REAL SWEDE (uh-oh):
en evro, flera evros
en cent, flera cent.
She said cent is derived from some foreign language, and that the foreign language is most likely English. Therefore, because in English (where the word cent clearly originally comes from to this planet) there is no plural for cent, also Swedish shouldn't have it.

[japh]

Dakkus wrote
She said cent is derived from some foreign language, and that the foreign language is most likely English. Therefore, because in English (where the word cent clearly originally comes from to this planet) there is no plural for cent, also Swedish shouldn't have it.

The word cent takes the plural cents in English when referring to U.S. currency but should remain sigular when referring to the Euro. However many people here use the plural when feferring to Euro cent.

[Craft]

There is however "official" information from the EU itself on how to spell Euro in different languages (for legislation):
http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/pub ... 336_en.pdf

The table line regarding Finnish is a little artificial, because there are no indefinite and definite forms in Finnish, unlike in Germanic and Latin languages.

About the Swedish en cent (sg.) - centen (pl.): There is a group of en-words with irregular derivation (with some change in the vowel and consonant too).

indef. sg. - def. pl.:
en man - männen ~ a man - the men
en gås - gässen ~ a goose - the geese
en mus - mössen ~ a mouse - the mice (edited the plural)

[japh]

unfortunately the plural of mouse is mice.