Yep, sorry. I was in Brazil several times during the mid- and late-80s, not sure why I thought it was the 70s. I’ll correct, thanks.
Another minor nitpick: Dexter compares the yen to the dollar and notes that “a yen is worth less than a penny.” The yen is not divisible, and is more similar to a penny than a dollar. Most items in Japan will be sold in terms of “hundreds” of yen, never singles.
I agree, don Jaime, but I don’t read the Staff Report as saying anything different. A single yen (based on today’s exchange rates) is worth less than a penny. We’re not saying it’s subdivided into yen-cents or anything, and you can buy stuff for less than 100 yen. Not much, agreed. Well, anyway, you could two years ago.
I can’t help thinking about Mark Twain’s Hank Morgan, the Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, and his discussions with Marco and Dowley regarding political economy and buying power. The chapter makes a good supplement to Dex’s very good article.
You say that several countries, including Mexico, use the dollar sign () in their currency. The opposite is true. The () sign was used in Spain and its colonies since the seventeenth century, and in Portugal and Brazil since 1747, prior to the existence of the USA.
The 13 colonies used officially british currency, but since their commerce with spanish colonies was greater than with the metropolis, in practice they used the mexican, peruvian or spanish “pesos de ocho” (the famous pieces of eight of pirate movies).
Since these pieces were equivalent with the german taller, the british called them dollars, instead of pesos.
So, it is not the mexicans that use the dollar sign in their pesos, it’s the americans that use the calderón sign in their dollars.
Sergio Great first post and welcome to the boards.
You say that Brazil used the sign since 1747. Since Brazil about that time had a rather extensive silver coinage based on the *Reis* system, and the coins were denominated with values such as 75, 80, 150, 160, 640 Reis, why did they find it necessary to use the Spanish sign? Was it only in reference to the “dollar” sized coins, which they didn’t mint themselves?
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, Sergio.
The Staff Report was long enough without discussing the origins of terms or symbols, already covered by Cecil:
Where did the word “dollar” come from?
Samclem
Brazil used portuguese coinage. The portuguese Real (singular of Réis) employed the sign $ called cifrão (big cypher), as did the Escudo, prior of the adoption of the Euro by Portugal.
Note the different plurals of Real (Réis until the mid twentieth century and Reais now). This is because the first Real, meant Royal (from Latin Rex = king) while the actual Real means Real, like in English (from Latin Res = thing).
Our ancient currency the mil-réis, mentioned by Nadreck was graphed 1$000.
Post Reply