denomination pronunciation

With a title like that, you KNOW this is gotta be a fun thread.


So the last coin show I go to, I sit down at a table with a guy that deals primarily with foreign coins. Keep in mind, I live in Topeka, and I'm the only darksider that regularly attends my coin club... Anywho - I sit down, after being invited to do so, and look through the man's cases.

'Anything you are interested in looking at?' askes he.

'Do you have any colonial reales?' askes I.

He looks at me funny, and says, 'RealES' (re-al-ees).

I looked at him back and said, 'Ok. Do you havES any realES?'

To which he looked over his table and said - 'No. Sorry.'

So, I pronounced it re-als. I'm probably wrong, or else he's just fancier than me, but it got me to thinking... How many other coins am I mis-pronouncing?

Do I sound like an idiot, when I call them Duck-its? Maybe it's Du-Cats... Because I don't think I've ever had a verbal conversation about them before. Anyone else ever run into this problem?

 

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I dont speak Spanish but I do know it's pronounced RAY-AH-LAYS,meaning Royals.As for ducats,your first example is Amerenglish pronunciation and the other is correct,at least to the folks that minted them.I also know we have a lot of members that collect those "Frenchie" coins,you know,pertards,ekus,Blank D'ooners,lardis and tourniquets...yep that's my 2 cints wurth

 

yeah, I know what it means... I was just not stressing the last e.

 

that's a funny story Rick.

 

In Russia dollar is pronounced Dohlaryi

Spanish is usually dohlar.

 

Reales (as in reels, or not fake, but two not fakes)
Ducat (as DuCat or DuKit)


Or at least that's how i've been pronouncing them all these years and i don't intend to change now!

 

Don't forget ginneys (guineas) and sovrin's (sovereigns).

 

more ginneys please, I already got four sovrins!

 

Correct,reals IS pronounced that way but reales is three syllables RAY-AL-ESS,the phonetics to the right of your words is for the first spelling.

 

a case of you saying `pot ay- toes' when I say `tatties' .

 

Well, I say something like ray-ah-les and doo-cut, but that is not necessarily what an English native speaker would say. In other words, the term "mis-pronouncing" in Rick's initial message is mis-leading. Similarly, the word franc is pronounced with a nasal a at the end - but if you pronounce it like somebody's first name "Frank", would that be a mispronunciation or a localization?

Christian (and I won't ask you to pronounce that name "properly", hehe)

 

Hey, Americans can screw up the pronuciation of our coins too. Anybody want to tell me how to pronounce "disme?"

 

the 's' is silent... yes, that will do nicely.

 

I don't care if I say it right or wrong. If I'm looking to buy the coin my money is doing the real talking and the salesman should be agreeing with however I say it.

If he wants to model in a polite way thats ok thru.
But I'll still likely to say it wrong the next day anyway.

You say potato or tomato, I say fries with sauce.

 

Too bad we don't have a historical tape recorder. I'm assuming that Thomas Jefferson had a distinct southern drawl, possibly tempered by his years in France. But then again he was also known as one of the worst "orators" of our founding fathers.. many an early senator or congressmen was lulled to sleep. So with distinct American pride, I can certainly imagine the man who added the disme to the American numismatic vocabulary as quietly and not so forcefully enunciating "DIS-ME"

 

In South Africa,the threepence was known by the nickname 'Tickey',which is derived from the Malay 'Tiga',which means '3'.The threepence coin is correctly pronounced as 'thruppence' or 'thrupney-bit'.The term 'Tickey' later became the 2-1/2 Cents.The nickname was also used in the Rhodesian states as well.

Aidan.

 

didn't the term 'tickey' become awfully devalued when it went from threepence to 2 1/2 cents? Seems odd that a nickname would carry over like that.

 

Rick,the term 'Tickey' can mean something that is small.In this case,the 2-1/2 Cents was the smallest-sized coin.The term was first used in 1877 as a reference to the British 3d.,which was circulating in all 4 British colonies that now make up South Africa.
The term didn't really catch on until just before World War I when a circus from England was touring South Africa.There was a clown named Eric Hoyland who was nicknamed 'Tickey the Clown' because of his short stature.Because of this,the term caught on.

Aidan.

 

It's a thre'pence to me. Or Threpney, some say thrup' ney bit.