Talk:European Currency Unit

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Economics

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Numismatics

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"Ein Kuh"?

From the article:

Another was its similarity to Ein Kuh (German, a cow).

Nice, but not correct - "a cow" is "eine Kuh" in German, which isn't all that similar to ECU anymore. Maybe it's "ein Q" ("a Q") instead? (the letter Q is pronounced the same as "Kuh" in German)? I'm not sure myself, and I haven't heard this at all, but "ein Kuh" is definitely not something a German speaker would say, and should be corrected. -- Schnee (cheeks clone) 02:40, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Jein. It depends on the dialect. Some dialects would say "'ne Kuh" and "'n Ecu", however, the E in "ne" is not stressed, whereas the E in "Ecu" is. samwaltz 08:43, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Eine Kuh" and "ein Ecu" sound very similar, if you mispronounce "Ecu" as [ek'u:] instead of [ek'ü:]. —Nightst a llion (?) 20:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I was living in Germany at the time, I can say that the closeness in sound to "Kuh" was voiced as a common objection, from both public and politicians, to the name "Ecu". This may in part, however, have been an excuse to change the name for other reasons. At the time some people hoped in some way to keep the term "Mark" in Germany and saw the successor to the Deutsche Mark (called in Britain and the U.S. Deutschmark) as the "Euromark". The idea was that "Euro" should be used as a prefix in each country to a traditional currency term, but this very "German" concept never caught on. Shulgi 10:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

é cu (is ass): although most educated English speakers will probably understand what this means, it continues to be an Americanism. As Jesus entered Jerusalem mounted on an ass, I think this translation is inadequate. Everybody got to be somewhere! (talk) 21:17, 19 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think this translation was made up by a portuguese-speaking people. But, anyway, cu is literally a slang for anus, not ass. (and the formal equivalent in Portuguese would be ânus). [ also, to note: I changed cú to cu, because the former is grammatically incorrect. But to be honest, I don't think Wikipedia is a trivia for collecting funny facts; is this cacophony sourced? ] --187.40.192.82 (talk) 19:40, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Table

A few years ago I'd seen the composite table computed with exact currency units (62.5 German pfennige, etc.), rather than relative weights. Would anyone have anything against my adding that to the table? samwaltz 21:48, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's right that this WP page give average weight deducted from application of formula, it is difficult to deduct formula.

Here are some explanatory notes that you can find on http://www.statistics.dnb.nl/index.cgi?lang=uk&todo=Koersen (Dutch national bank, they've got monthly exchange rates since 1982 , rates are against NLG, but if you divide all of them, you can find cross rates.

"The currency basket to which the ECU has been equated was last fixed on 21 September 1989 as follows: 0.6242 Deutsche mark, 1.332 French franc, 0.08784 Pound sterling, 151.8 Italian lira, 0.2198 Dutch guilder, 3.431 Belgian/Luxembourg franc, 6,885 Spanish peseta, 0.1976 Danish krone, 0.008552 Irish pound, 1.44 Greek drachma and 1.393 Portuguese escudo. On 31 December 1998 the ECU ceased to exist."

With above rates, you can find formula to compute XEU rates against any currency (for example XEU/USD= 0.6242 *DEM/USD+1.332 * FRF/USD... Please note for example that above DNB pages gives XEU rates so you don't have to use the formula. I used the formula to compute theorical euro rates before 01/01/1999 (as GBP was part of XEU basket but not part of EURO) see this historical difference for example on this link http://fxtop.com/en/historates.php?C1=EUR&C2=XEU&YA=1&DD1=01&MM1=01&YYYY1=1990&B=1&P=&I=1&DD2=02&MM2=09&YYYY2=2011&btnOK=Go%21 (fxtop.com is my website)Lpele (talk) 22:02, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Projects

I have removed the {{WikiProject Numismatics}} template from this page as the article does not actually go into any detail about the few ECU coins that were ever issued, and as no ECU notes were ever issued. As stated on the projects page, Numismatics studies the physical aspects of money: coins, notes, stock certificates, etc. The fiscal concepts represented by a joint currency are more of an Economic concept than a Numismatic one. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 12:28, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]