On Wednesday, July 2, 2003, 3:49:35 PM, Paul Makepeace wrote:
PM> What is your point? That the US currency is failing somehow because it
PM> doesn't explicitly put its cents value on its coinage?
No, the point was that although there are dozens of slang words for
various monetary amounts in British English, at least a tourist coming to
the country doesn't have to accost a local to find out what the coins in
his/her pocket actually are. "Quarter Dollar" is no more informative than
"Flurglespotch" unless your english is up to a level where you know what
the word "quarter" means -- even if they put 1/4 on it that would be an
improvement.
PM> I'm sure there's a million other vastly more complex culturally specific
PM> things you'd have to learn on arrival to any new country. Compared to
PM> learning a new language or dialect of a language criticizing a currency
PM> for the extra load of having to learn the value of two coins seems to me
PM> laughable.
Indeed, and point taken. However seeing as iirc the thread all started
with a discussion about metrication and the lack thereof, there's also a
valid point to be made that you can go to almost any other country in the
world and quite happily work out the money by looking at the numbers
printed on the notes and coins. Of course, nobody really expects the USA
to give a monkeys about the rest of the world!
PM> Imagine an employer reading this thread - "this guy seems to struggle
PM> learning; not only finding the information out, but committing that
PM> trivial amount to memory". :-)
If a future employer searches me out on the net I strongly suspect that
would be one of the least of my concerns!
--
Iain | PGP mail preferred: pubkey @ www.deepsea.f9.co.uk/misc/iain.asc
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