It's Euros, not Euro Dollars

Thank you, Frank. It always irritates me to hear "euro dollars", as if there is no currency in the world that is not some kind of dollar. It reminds me of when Americans used to call our Canadian dollars "funny money" because our bills look "so different" from US bills. Well, yes ! They are different. They are not American.

As long as we are making corrections, the proper spelling of the word that ends the penultimate sentence in your last paragraph is spelled "too".

Sorry, a pet peeve of mine.

And why we are on corrections -- I thought I was told that there is no plural of Euro. It is simply Euro.

European Commission, Directorate General for Translation: English Style Guide section 20.8 "The euro. Like 'pound', 'dollar' or any other currency name in English, the word 'euro' is written in lower case with no initial capital and, where appropriate, takes the plural 's' (as does 'cent')." European Commission Directorate-General for Translation - English Style Guide.

And for the other side of the coin (so to speak)...Convergency report, May 2007, European Central Bank. "The euro is the single currency of the Member States that have adopted it. To make this singleness apparent, Community law requires a single spelling of the word “euro” in the
nominative singular case in all Community and national legislative provisions....This unambiguous
and definitive agreement by the heads of state
and government of the Member States has been
confirmed in all Community legal acts that
refer to the euro, which always use a single
spelling in all official Community languages." So I guess either/or is acceptable in informal usage.

I'm glad we finally got this all figured out.

Now for the burning question...is it socially acceptable for me to wear shorts while climbing Mt. Everest?

I think I will go with the European Central Bank on this one, since all countries that use the Euro are members, whereas only a little more than half of the EU countries use the Euro.

I think the European Commission is once again demonstrating their irrelavance. All they actually control is the translation of official documents. The commission seems to be made up of a bunch of out-of-touch individual who still suffer from the dilusion that French is an important language (let alone the most important language) in the world, LOL. (Note: in French, the official plural of Euro is Euros).

In Ireland, the only English speaking country to use the Euro, Euro is the official plural.

In most languages of Europe, "s" is not used to form a plural (or at least, not commonly used to form a plural. German does use an "s" occasionally, but mostly not). Apparently the EC tried to form an official plural for each language, individually. The EMU, on the other hand, decreed that there should be one universal plural (Euro) used everywhere.

Do people really say "euro dollar"? Yikes!

In Italian it's ay-oo-roh. The separate pronounciation of each and every vowel really messes me up! (try aeroplano...ugh!) The Italian 'euro' applies to both singluar and plural usage I think.

And maybe those who call it 'euro dollars' are just trying to psychologically trick the euro into dropping and the dollar into rising. ;-)

Here is another one.
Milano-Not Milan.
Funny, my English spell checker went crazy over Milano! LOL!
I hate rules too, but for anyone that says "euro dollars" is too much. I wonder if people that say that, has even been to Europe!

It's banana not banama.

For all the Oktoberfest fans, it is "Munchen"
Other countries are not exempt from this. My favorite was when Clinton was president. The German news always said "Arkansas" like it is spelled, not Arkansaw. They used to occasionally mix up Dayton and Daytona beach too. Funny stuff!

Of course you can wear shorts Reg, but may I suggest the thermals underneath? Keep the shoulders covered also, and make sure that your money belt is secure. No point snagging on a rock in those conditions. Try not to look/sound like a tourist though.

Now we can work on the pronunciation. In Germany it is pronounced "oy-ro" with a roll of the r. I know Americans say "yur-oh", but I would like to know what they say in Spain or Greece, etc.. Send in your pronunciations so we can all practice!

If everyone here wants to be such sticklers to rules such as whether or not Euro should ever have an "s" at the end (I say yes because I'm using it in English usage which adds an "s" to make things plural. As in: I"m going to buy some euros, not I'm going to buy some euro. )

If from now on you only want to use the "offical" name for things, and not the english translations, then lets make sure we're consistent with the rules (and I know how much so many of you love rules):

It's Firenze, not Florence
It's Venezia, not Venice
It's Roma, not Rome
It's Wien, not Vienna
It's Koln, not Cologne
It's Napoli, not Naples

and so on....

And don't forget JFK who said "Ich bin ein Berliner" which is translated to "I am a donut."

He should have said, "Ich bin Berliner." "Ein Berliner" is a popular donut (or doughnut) (BTW--Donut and doughnut are both correct so let's not get started on that again.)

And don't forget, it's ?? for Beijing. Frank, wasn't JFK's cry actually, "I am a jelly-filled donut (doughnut)" ??

To the guy who asked about shorts on Everest-- by all means, YES, you can. You should be sure to bring a backpack in which to carry off frostbitten limbs, tho- be they yours or somebody elses. It would be unutterably rude to leave used body parts as litter

True, the Berliner is a jelly filled donut only "the jelly filled" is sort of a given since if there was no jelly, it wouldn't be a Berliner.

But...maybe he really was a jelly-filled donut? Kind of like the jingle:

"Oh I wish I was an Oscar Mayer weiner...cuz

Everybody'd be in love with me"

The day the Euro went into effect Europe-wide I was in Roma. A few days after I was enjoying a cappuccino in a well visited bar and enjoyed a long, vigorous, and passionate argument between the Italian regulars over how to pronounce Euro. EVERYBODY had an opinion and expressed it passionately. So with such divergent opinions among the Italians themselves, I have ever since tried to pronounce it the way whomever I was speaking to pronounced it. But they did all agree that Euro was both singular and plural AND that Americans were bound to get it wrong anyway.

Good thing JFK wasn't in Hamburg.

or Frankfurt.

Frank, not to put too fine a point on it, but it's

Köln or Koeln, not Koln.

And how about Nürnberg, not Nuremburg, and Füssen, not Fussen.

Also, ever heard of "sheep". As in there go some sheep, not there go some sheeps.

My computer doesn't type in German....only American English.

There are exceptions to English rules which is why it's a very difficult language to learn properly.

If you want to call it Euro for both singular and plural, feel free. You can call them whatever you want.

I was trying to make a point that Euro(s) and Eurodollars are two different things.

How about we end this thread and go back to discussing travel.

Funny, I agreed with you on the Euro vs eurodollar part. And I was amused that someone else was as fussy as I am.

One of my pet peeves is Salzberg, instead of Salzburg.

Even without German keys on your computer, you should at least use ue for ü, as in Fuessen, or the Bahn query page won't understand you.

There are several ways to create those German umlaut characters on an American keyboard.

You can use the <alt> key and numbers on the numeric keypad. ü, as in Füssen, is <alt> 0252.

But alt characters are not always recognized on all browsers. Since this site is in HTML, you can use the HTML codes - ü is made by writing &uuml; (for u umlaut) in the text screen. It looks funny in text but comes up right when interpreted by the brower.

If you're interested (I suspect you aren't), PM me and I will send you the complete set.

What was it Obama said while in Berlin?

"Ich bin ein Beginner"?

I usually send money to my nephews in Germany. Looks like I may have to increase it to adjust for the beating the dollar continues to take? ;)

B~

These posts being WAY off the map of anything useful in terms of travel, I can only surmise that the 'Read this before you post' person has been enjoying the humour enormously. A sense of humour goes a long way, doesn't it!

I think too many of us "regulars" are bored. We need new questions....not the same old "what should I wear," "where should I go," etc.

If JFK had only said "ich bin ein Ami" he could have been correct, as those are also donut style pastries.
BTW, the person iv'e heard say euro-dollars probably has never been there, and if he did, would fit the loud american tourist profile to a t.

Early in our trip, my wife tired of going through the currency translation when window shopping... she told me she was just going to think "dollars" when she saw a price and I would have to worry about the real cost, and so it was...

in french, euro is "eh-ro" with the mouth not wide open but sort of in an "O" formation.

what about genova?

Hate to ruin an urban legend, but Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" was neither a grammatical nor idiomatic error. From Wikipedia:

According to an urban legend, Kennedy allegedly made an embarrassing grammatical error by saying "Ich bin ein Berliner," referring to himself not as a citizen of Berlin, but as a common pastry[3]:

Kennedy should have said "Ich bin Berliner" to mean "I am a person from Berlin." By adding the indefinite article ein, his statement implied he was a non-human Berliner, thus "I am a jelly doughnut".

The legend seems to stem from a play on words with Berliner, the name of a doughnut variant filled with jam or plum sauce that is thought to have originated in Berlin.

In fact, Kennedy's statement is both grammatically correct[4] and perfectly idiomatic, and cannot be misunderstood in context. The urban legend is not widely known within Germany, where Kennedy's speech is considered a landmark in the country's postwar history.[5] The indefinite article ein can be and often is omitted when speaking of an individual's profession or residence but is necessary when speaking in a figurative sense as Kennedy did. Since the president was not literally from Berlin but only declaring his solidarity with its citizens, "Ich bin Berliner" would not have been correct.[6]

And to comment on an earlier issue on the correct rendering of the plural of "euro"... at least in Dutch, where the plural is formed with either "en" or more infrequently "-s", the correct form is "euros".

Tom....you're correct. Yes, his grammar was perfect, and there's no doubt as to what he meant. The citizens of Berlin knew the "jelly-filled donut" (it's actually a little more subtle than a donut...or it used to be)...as a Pfannkuchen or a Krapfen. But elsewhere in Germany, it was also known as a "Berliner." So it's not that it was grammatically incorrect, I think it's more that it could be left open to a more humorous interpretation. It's like someone from Frankfurt saying "I am a Frankfurter," or someone from Hamburg saying," I am a Hamburger." Grammatically, they're perfectly correct, and we know the meaning they're trying to convey. But it also sounds just a bit funny to North American English ears.

Thanks for that...do you guys also tell little kids there is no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy?

Thank God you can still say "beer" in English and be understood anywhere, even though it's pronounced many different ways in different countries. Maybe it's the implied gesture of hoisting a pint to one's mouth that gives it away.

I wasn't going to join in on the Kennedy thing, but when I read that Wikipedia says this is an urban legend that Germans don't know about, I had to jump in. It is correct that people in Berlin don't call this a Berliner as is done in other parts of Germany. But Germans certainly know about the play on words. Good lord, does whoever wrote the wiki article think they don't read the news? One of the funniest things I experienced with this story is, I was with 3 Germans down in Kaiserslautern in a taxi, when for whatever reason, we started talking about this story. Of course we said it was a good thing that he did not make the speech in Frankfurt (frankfurter) or in Hamburg (hamburger) and then the taxi driver jumps in and says "or in Paris" (pariser) Everybody burst out laughing, cause in Germany, a pariser is a common word for condom. So, the moral of this story is: ya can't always trust those wiki articles and Germans don't consider "ich bin ein berliner" to be bad grammar.

For the upcoming holidays, I think we should have an online version of "A Christmas Carol." This thread alone offers many candidates for the role of Scrooge.

Lighten up folks....if you live your life needing to be 100% correct and living by the rules, you're going to stress yourself out. Laugh occassionally. Especially those who work in or around centers of government.

This is some of the funniest stuff I've ever read on this site. Thanks for the giggle now I can go to sleep happy or is it happier...

Question: how many euro dollars does a Berliner cost?

At the time President Kennedy made that statement the wall was still up, y'all, so from what I have read he might have said "Ich bin West (or "und Ost") Berliner" and it then would have made more sense.

If he had said "Ost Berliner", however, he would have been admitting that he was Communist, so he kept it to "Berliner" and so he admitted to being a jelly donut.

Kinda like the wife of the German ambassador, trying to impress dinner party guests with her German by saying "Ich bin kalt!" (referring to the temperature in the room, to HER way of thinking, but announcing to everyone else that she is frigid.).

Ah, nuances! I love 'em!

B~

It's Gaillimh not Galway! LOL! :)

PS: I miss the irish 'punt'.

I have nothing to add. I just want to tell you all how much you've brightened up this damp and dreary Sunday afternoon! Thanks!

I agree. I've been following this one for several days and it has me LOLing each time. BTW to all of the Brits on here, is it really 'Sinjun' and not 'St. John?'

.

Ich bin ein Binliner.

...or so I was told.

Actually, we're off to Remagen in a couple of weeks,
my wife and I, to spend some euros and drink lots of
helles Bier.

We will also visit Köln to see the Dom, Koblenz to
go to Deutsches Eck, and Bonn to see the amazing
3-D concrete Beethoven sculpture.

There's a former Scottish football player and
commentator who is called Ian St. John - pronounced
"Saint John" ....

.... and the former English politician, Norman ST John-Stevas, pronounced " Sinjun-Stevas", now Lord
St John of Fawsley.

I think it might be a snobbery thing - but I'd hate
to start a controversy.

( is that a conTROVersy or a controVERsy ) ?

Slante Mhath !

Pete.