Keywords

Euro/Euras/Eurue/Eura…

Language, Politics, The Economy

Languaghat has previously covered controversies over how to spell Euro”, but this latest one is truly hilarious:

All official EU texts must be spelt the same way even if it makes no sense in the Baltic languages.

The biggest headache is for the 3.5 million people of Lithuania, who would normally write euras, eurue, eura, euru, eure, eurai, eurams, eurus, eurais and eurose, depending on the word’s function in a sentence. The genitive in particular has caused tempers to fray.

In a letter to the Dutch EU presidency, the Lithuanian government insisted: The non-inflective form of the term euro is unacceptable to the Lithuanian language.”

The Dutch offered a compromise yesterday that would insist on the euro” spelling for all official EU texts such as the constitution, but let states vary usage in national documents provided the first three letters are eur”. This is not much help to Latvia, where the word begins with eir”.

Thomas Thurman, in the comments, adds that in Latvian Euro begins Ewr”

Previous
Next