Just a quick reply to Jenny. It’s true we say 100 quid (well street traders do!), not 100 quids. There is the slang ‘quids in’, meaning you’re doing well (presumably making a profit).
But what is this about pounds not being pluralised? (or pluralized)
‘Give us a fiver’, ‘bung me five quid’ and ‘lend me five pounds’ all mean the same thing.
Anyway I hope you enjoyed your stay!
Mike King - is it true that Northern Ireland prints it’s own notes? I know Eire (Southern Ireland) has a separate currency, but then it’s not part of the UK.
And there’s another possible thread - what’s the difference between England, Britain, Great Britain and the United Kingdom?
STERKING ok, matt ,it says here that sterling comes from the word eastering,which was an old word for germans, german or sterling goods were of high quality. Then sterling came to mean anything of high quality. Then it became anything of a certain set standard of quality or value. Sterling coins were of a standard set by the throne. sterling silver met some other standard(i aint gonna look everything) so i was wrong.(gasp)
an english friend of mine gave me a beautiful silver tipped calfskin billfold that i have used for 20 yrs.folded it is almost square,but it is just a tad too short to easily slip in a us bill. he had scored several thousand ofthese things inexpensivly (relativly speaking) on a trip back home and ,uh,"brought"them over. He was going to make a fortune selling them in the us. The quality is certainly there ,mine still looks great, but every one that picked one up and tried it put it back. (I never have any money ,us or otherwise, to put in it so it don’t bother me.)
So let me see if I have this straight. I could walk into a London bank and theoretically present any of the following five pound notes as legal currency: A British one, a Scottish one (which according to Jennie is actually three different ones), a Northern Irish one, a Manx one, a Gibralterese(?) one, a Channel Islands one (although for all I know Guernsey and Jersey issue different ones), or, while nobody has explicitly said so, presumedly a Welsh one. And this is after currency simplification? I would think you people would be glad to toss the whole thing and start over with the Euro.
No, they aren’t all legal currency in England. Scottish notes are, Northern Irish aren’t, I honestly have no idea about the others but my guess would be no. English notes on the other hand are accepted in all the places mentioned.
No the Welsh can’t be bothered
Some of us would just be glad to toss the Union, full stop.
Bíonn caora dhubh ar an tréad is gile (there is a black sheep even in the whitest flock).
An amusing anecdote regarding Americans not being metric…
I was sitting in a lecture one day, and whatever the prof was discussing necessitated referring to a ‘quart’. And mid-sentence, he interrupted himself to explain that a quart was an “archaic form of measurement approximating today’s litre.” And I thought to myself, “Woah… It isn’t all that archaic across the pond – they don’t know what a quart is here??” It just threw me for a loop because even though they’re metric here (apart from some weight measurements, e.g. ‘stones’) I didn’t expect that something still so very common elsewhere would need to be explained.
I am amused to hear the American Imperial (I don’t see a contradiction) system described as “archaic”, which it is. I will be pleased to use that description in the future.
Actually, there is a contradiction in “American Imperial”. The American system and the Imperial system are both forms of the old English system, but they are quite different, with some units of the same name varying by as much as 20%.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
