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One says 10 Dollars or 10 Euros, but 10 Yen or 10 Yuan.
Why?

BladorthinTheGrey
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Ross Millikan
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  • Possible duplicate (except for "yuan")? http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/501/should-nouns-borrowed-from-japanese-be-pluralized – curious-proofreader Sep 05 '16 at 05:28
  • @curious-proofreader The other one is about translations of foreign words. – Mr Lister Sep 05 '16 at 08:43
  • @MrLister And yen and yuan are not foreign words? – Andrew Leach Sep 05 '16 at 09:52
  • In South Africa both "rand" and "rands" are accepted plurals of the national currency although the former tends to be used mainly by speakers of Afrikaans (in which "s" is not affixed to words as a plural) and the latter by English speakers. – Ronald Sole Sep 05 '16 at 09:55
  • Who says "10 euros"? It's 10 deutschmark, 10 euro, 10 franc. The dollar is the odd one out here, not the yuan. – RegDwigнt Sep 05 '16 at 11:51
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    I don't know about Japanese but in Chinese there are no plural forms for most nouns so Yuan is both singular and plural, like 'sheep' in English. These currencies aren't alone, though. Officially the plural of Euro is Euro in most languages and was, until recently, in English as well; though the recommendation in English has been changed recently. See https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/euro – BoldBen Sep 05 '16 at 11:43
  • For the same reason that the plural of the Norwegian "krone" is "kroner". – Hot Licks Sep 05 '16 at 12:14
  • @RegDwigнt British English tends to pluralise all currency units (except yen and yuan and perhaps a very few others) — certainly euros, marks, francs, rupees, dinars, dollars, shillings and even pounds. – Andrew Leach Sep 05 '16 at 12:25
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    @RegDwigHt I have never heard 10 Euro (and it sounds wrong). Also, it always seems to be capitalized. And the plural of franc (currently Swiss, although this also applies to the former French currency) is francs in both English and French; and of course, in English, the plural of the former German currency is marks (Deutschmarks), not mark. Among former European currencies, it is difficult to come up with one whose English plural is the same as its singular (sometimes the English plural is the same as that in the local language, e.g., lira, lire—also current Turkish currency) – David Handelman Sep 05 '16 at 14:21
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    @AndrewLeach - In my family we don't say 10 euros, we say 10 euro. (I live in the U.S. currently.) Is that because my spouse is German? What do people say in the UK? – aparente001 Sep 05 '16 at 16:36
  • @aparente001 If you read my comment, "British English...euros..." – Andrew Leach Sep 05 '16 at 16:40
  • @AndrewLeach - Really? I wonder if Britishers would still say it like that if the UK had adopted the currency (and thus have had to talk about euros more often). Funny! I just gave it an S in that sentence! – aparente001 Sep 05 '16 at 16:50
  • Malaysia's national currency uses sen (equivalent to cents) and ringgit (denominations that are multiples of 100 sen). The words sen and ringgit may be singular or plural. – Sven Yargs Sep 05 '16 at 20:13
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    Also note that quid and knicker don't have an s in the plural. – Brian Hooper Sep 05 '16 at 20:22
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    @aparente001 In German units (including currency units) are normally not pluralized (with a few exceptions like the units of time). 1 Euro, 10 Euro, 1 Meter, 10 Meter, 1 Sekunde, 10 Sekunden.. English generally pluralizes unit names. – Chieron Sep 27 '16 at 09:35
  • I'm certainly not an expert in Chinese and Japanese languages, but I have heard that due to the pictograph writing system, they tend not to denote plurals of words (they have enough symbols!), instead extrapolating plurals from context. I'm therefore not terribly surprised when speaking a native Mandarin speaker fails to pluralize when speaking English. – Adam Katz Oct 20 '16 at 18:20
  • @AdamKatz: I was asking about why English behaves the way it does why the original language behaves the way it does. When we bring nouns from other languages, we tend to use an s for the plural regardless of what the original language did (unless it is Latin, where we often follow the original). – Ross Millikan Oct 20 '16 at 18:24
  • It's a hypothesis. As you noted, English generally uses its own plural rules, but the inherited word's native pluralization (or lack thereof) is often also inherited, as in octopi vs octopuses. – Adam Katz Oct 20 '16 at 20:33
  • @AdamKatz Neither Japanese nor Chinese generally use plural markers, that’s true; but it’s nothing to do with the writing system—both do have ways of indicating the plural markers when they are used. The Chinese suffix 们 -men overtly marks plural human entities (我 wǒ ‘I’ ~ 我们 wǒmen ‘we’; 同志 tóngzhì ‘comrade, mate’ ~ 同志们 tóngzhìmen ‘mates, you guys’); in Japanese 達 -tachi/-dachi has much the same function (子供 kodomo ‘child’ ~ 子供達 kodomotachi ‘children’), or ら -ra for certain pronouns (彼 kare ‘he’ ~ 彼ら karera ‘they’). Non-human entities do not inflect for number. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 26 '16 at 11:25
  • @DavidHandelman I would definitely say 10 guilder over 10 guilders. The latter sounds odd to me. I’m also reasonably sure (though less so than with the guilders) that I’d say 10 punt rather than 10 punts. Unlike yuan and yen, though, both these do take plural markers just fine when non-specific plurals are intended, just not after numerals. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 26 '16 at 11:37
  • @DavidHandelman See my comment from Sept 5th and particularly the link. 10 Euro was officially correct but now it's officially 10 Euros. I don't know what that does to the Irish, though, I'm sure I've heard the cast of Mrs Brown's Boys talking about 10 Euro. – BoldBen Nov 26 '16 at 13:36

6 Answers6

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It might be useful to bear in mind the distinction between the name of a currency, which may be a proper noun, and the name of its primary unit, which is in principle pluralizable, even when this distinction is not marked.

In general, the plural of an English noun has an appended s. This applies to the most familiar foreign currency units too. However, in the case of unfamiliar currencies—the Bhutanese ngultrum, for example—if we have heard of it at all, we are probably aware of it only as a currency type: the currency used in Bhutan, which we would call the ngultrum, or arguably the Ngultrum. Few of us are engaged in daily transactions involving that currency. So nobody knows whether 100 such units should be called 100 ngultrum or 100 ngultrums. Our limited familiarity with the currency only as a currency type steers us towards the former, while the normal pattern of English grammar draws us to the latter.

Given this uncertainty, we are open to influence. The venturesome foreign traveller who does actually engage in ngultrum transactions is likely to be most influential here. He or she in turn will likely be influenced by the native usage in the (to the native) foreign language of English. I don't know how the Bhutanese language marks the plural form of the ngultrum (unit), but it is unlikely to be with a terminal s. This background will make the uninflected, or otherwise inflected, plural more probable among those who transact in ngultrum with English-speakers, and eventually that form may become the established English orthography.

I suspect that this pattern was followed in the case of the Japanese currency, which was once hardly known among English-speakers. Thus the plural of (the currency unit) yen is yen. It is likely that this set the precedent for the plural of yuan.

John Bentin
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As noted in multiple comments, the premise of your question is faulty. Officially, the plural of Euro is Euro:

In Community legislative acts the plural forms of euro and cent are spelled without the s, notwithstanding normal English usage.

200_success
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    Good luck making laws about how people use their own language: what are we, French? No cents to be had here. – tchrist Jan 19 '17 at 01:59
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The official currency of The Peoples Republic of China is the Renminbi. Yuan is used as a synonym for Renminbi internationally and referred to by the abbreviation CNY. In China they use Yuan to describe currency in general somewhat like the British could refer to pounds as Sterling. This is a hold over from when Chinese currency was not Fiat and a Yuan was a silver coin that could be broken down into smaller amounts by a decimal system where they would say for instance .5 Yaun leaving no need changing Yuan to Yuans. I own some modern Chinese silver panda coins that have a face value of 10 Yuan which if i were to sell for spot silver price while in China I would receive Some amount of Renminbis. The Chinese currently refer to yen as Japanese Yuan, The Dollar the American Yuan, the Euro the European Yuan and so on. Hopefully what I said helps. I'm not sure about the yen part of the question sorry.

Mr. Durden
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  • This may be so but it doesn't address the question. – Chenmunka Sep 27 '16 at 09:50
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    I thought the difference between the English and Chinese languages was made apparent in a previous post. I'm new to this so I didn't focus on that in my post. Lesson learned. – Mr. Durden Sep 27 '16 at 11:11
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Since we are borrowing the proper name of the currency, we also borrow the native plural form. Compare krone -> kroner and mark -> mark.

Roni Choudhury
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  • Octopus → octopoides? Campus → campi? Very rare. '... we also borrow the native plural form' is far from being a fixed rule, so more justification is required, Roni. – Edwin Ashworth May 02 '22 at 15:16
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Because Japanese deviated from the paths of English, Spanish, etc. a very long time ago, and thus evolved in a completely different direction, one that apparently does not include the suffix -s.

Catlover
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    I don't think it depends on the evolution of Japanese. Whether English applies the s seems independent of what the native language does. – Ross Millikan Jan 19 '17 at 00:02
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This is because they are invariant nouns. Examples of invariant currencies in plural form:

  • Yen (Japan)
  • Sen (fraction of a yen, Japan)
  • Yuan (China)
  • Jiao (fraction of a yuan, China)
  • Fen (fraction of a jiao, China)
  • Baht (Thailand)
  • Satang (fraction of a baht, Thailand)
  • Rand (South Africa)
  • Quid (British slang)

And, here are some irregular plurals of some other currencies:

  • Penny / pence (fraction of a pound, United Kindom only)
  • Paisa / paise (fraction of a rupee in India and Pakistan)
  • Drachma / drachmae or drachmas (Greece, formerly)
  • Krona / kronor (Sweden)
  • Krone / kroner (Norway and Denmark)
  • Markka / Markkaa (Finland, formerly)
  • Lira / lire (Italy, formerly)
  • Real / reais (Brazil)
3kstc
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    Saying that yen and yuan don't add an s in the plural "because they are invariant nouns" seems to me to be an explanation like the one given by a physician in one of Molière's plays, who says that opium induces sleep becuase it contains a "dormitive principle". – herisson Jan 19 '17 at 05:12
  • @herisson 'Because they are invariant nouns in the original language, and have been imported felicitously (subject to transliteration)' gets closer. But then some plural forms aren't imported. – Edwin Ashworth May 02 '22 at 15:24