Euros and cents

Yoda

Dear colleagues,

I have written an open letter to the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, about the serious problem we have in Ireland, namely, that the false plural without -s is used with the words "euro" and "cent" in Ireland and that this bad grammar is given to us all hundreds of times of day on television every day.

If you have interest in sociolinguistic rights, see http://www.evertype.com/standards/euro/open-letter.pdf

Spread the word.

azezil

the one board where this might actually have been 'on topic' would have been business / economy and yet you posted it everywhere but there!!

Yoda

I did post it there. I admit Green Issues might be a bit far afield, but this topic bears on language (Humanities and Gaeilge), politics (Politics) and Irish Television as well as just Business and Economics.

In any case, I invite you to read the open letter to the minister.

Meh

For god's sake, will someone please ban this spamming crackpot and delete his posts?

Typedef

This thread is off topic, but I believe in free speech, so you are perfectly entitled to express your opinion, here thus I will help you make this thread pertinant to this forum.

Is this europeanisation of Irish (Hiberno English) a legitimate concern of 'environmentalism', depends on how you define an environment I suppose, the French for example made concillatory moves towards the protection of an Anglicisation of French, thus hamburger becomes l'hamburger and so on. Is it a form of sociocultural pollution, a newspeak mentality, perhaps, does the language require a cleanup in this case, maybe.
Feel free to use this soapbox.

Typedef.

Yoda

Look, honestly, I had no idea that by sending basically a press release about something I consider relevant to Ireland's well-being would cause so much distress.

I chose to send to seven Boards.ie fora because I considered them to be visited by intelligent, interested people who might take an interest in something which is affecting all of us.

It is true that Green Issues may not be particularly relevant (less so than some of the other fora I posted to), but I do recall that the issue of the plural was raised here (by me) at one stage in the past few weeks.

Read the open letter. Basically the false plurals have been taking over as a kind of virus. People seem to have accepted the "authority" of this linguistic change (changing "cents" to "cent"!) and indeed a range of urban legends appears to have arisen apologizing for it and making it "acceptable".

I've done the research, found that this is not the case, and have written to a lot of people about it. I wanted to share that with the readers of Boards.ie.

Read the open letter. If it does not convince you that a total cockup has been made which makes us look idiotic in the eyes of the rest of the English-speaking world, then so be it. If it does convince you, use the natural plurals and encourage others to do so.

And tell your friends, family, and colleagues. A mistake has been made and I am trying to not be the only voice in the wilderness crying against it.