8, 2 and 3 are definitely Japanese. 1 and 4 are definitely Chinese. 6 has Chinese writing on one side and god knows what on the other, and doesn’t look like any Chinese coin I’ve ever seen. Off the top of my head I would guess 5 to be Thai but that’s not an informed opinion.
Speculating on my very limited knowledge of Chinese characters.
Agree about 8, 2 and 3.
I think #2 on the right (in pic 1) is 1 yen, and the clean one says “46”, but it looks too young to be from 1946. The dirty one says “31” I think.
#1 is says “66” (presumably 1966), and two of the characters say “Chung wah”, which is how Cantonese people say “Chinese language”
#4 (which is “73”, or “37” if I’m reading it back-to-front!) says “Chung wah [something] gwok”, which could mean “Chinese [something] country”. Maybe they’re Taiwanese? Is that Sun Yat Sen on #4?
#5 is definitely Thai baht. That’s the king you can see there.
#6 I have seen in antique shops in China, so I’d imagine it’s an old (pre-Communist?) Chinese coin.
#7 somewhere Arabic!
#8 - 10 yen (?) and says “80”
Someone else who’s better at reading kanji/characters had better correct me on all this.
One mistake, that’s not “wah” as in “language,” is “wah” as in, I dunno, Chinese.
#1 and #4 say “Chinese people’s country.” Now that I think about it, that could perhaps be Taiwan, given their former claims to all of China and the apparent age of the coins. And actually, I don’t think “zhong hua min guo” was China’s long title in the Mainland. Also, I don’t know what that “sheng” thing is all about, and that could be accounted for (if not my own ignorance) by possible differences between Beijing and Taiwanese Putonghua. So actually I think 1 and 4 may well be Taiwanese, I didn’t consider that. Too much time in the mainland speaking about the two as one country…
Hm, I found something similar but much older then 6. See here. The coin on the left has the same markings on the top, bottom and left. The coin on the right has the same markings on the right, bottom and left. I’m fairly certain that the back is the “Boo Ciowan” listed below. My Grandfather probably picked this up at the end of WWII. He was a Navy sailor.
I think 7 is Malaysia, not the moon and star and then their flag. But their coins seem to usually have some English on them. shrugs
Ha ha ha… Chinese can be tricky to decipher, but looking at that link, I think the words along the top are nonsense… Call me petty, but I love spotting stuff like that.
(Now somebody’s going to tell me it’s a chunk of famous text and I’m just too dumb to read between the lines to understand it…)
However, what I was told (by HK Canto speakers), was that, though for most languages, “man” is the word for “language” (e.g. “English” is “Ying man”), when it comes to the Chinese language, they use this “Wah” word - as in “Chung man”. Which now I come to think about it is prolly the “hua” in Mandarin “Putonghua”.
I’m now thinking that “Fa” and “Wah” look a little the same too. It’s been a while…
Osiris, I don’t think #7 is Malaysian, because I don’t think they use Arabic in Malaysia. Current Malaysian coins.
Point one… Don’t listen to what any Cantonese speaker tells you about Cantonese unless they’re a teacher or know you’re asking seriously! They will give you wrong or over-simplified answers much of the time. “man/wen” USUALLY refers to written language; one exception, as noted, is “English” in Cantonese. There are probably others, but I can’t think of them, likely because I don’t need to discuss very many languages in Chinese. Anyway “jung man/zhongwen” may refer to written Chinese or, I think, sometimes spoken, non dialect-specific “Chinese.” Distinctions between dialects will be made with “wah/hua.”
The simplified version of the “wah/hua” that appears on the coin takes away the top grass radical from the “flower” hua and adds a “ten” below.
Sorry about the hijack, but since my Chinese is nothing great I’m always pleased to actually be able to “drop some knowledge” with any degree of confidence.
Oh, I saw your correction. NO, I don’t believe they would ever say that. The “Chung wah” that appears on the coin means Chinese as in race/nationality/ethnicity, “chung wah” as in language is, as far as I know, not correct ever.
You’re most likely right. Although the coin is from 1982 and things might have changed. I couldn’t find any Malay coins from 82. I think I got this one from some McDonalds coins of the world bit in the 80s. It might come from the Persian Gulf.
Japanese coins aren’t dated with the AD system; they’re minted with the current Japanese era (go figure, huh?) date on them. A coin minted this year would have the date “Heisei 14” (“Heisei” of course would be in kanji) on it. The previous era was Showa which is what Hirohito’s reign name was. Heisei is Akihito’s reign name. One tricky thing is that the last year of one era is the same year as the first year of the next era unless the Emperor dies on December 31 at 23:59 (Japan follows the 0000-2359 system for time of day so midnight is the beginning of the day).
Here’s a nifty site to let you know the current date in a number of calenders: http://www.ecben.net/calendar.shtml. It also has links to some calendar conversions.
As for Malaysia: Malaysia, along with Indonesia, uses the Roman alphabet to write Bahasa.
For Chinese characters: “Min Guo” means Republic. Example: Tae Han Min Guk (Min Guk is how those two characters are pronounced in Korean) means Republic of Korea.
l. Taiwan. 1 dollar(yuan). Yr. 66=1977
2. Japan. 1 yen. yr. 49(I think)=1974
3. Japan. 100 yen. Yr 42 and 47. =1967 &1972
4. Taiwan. 10 dollars. yr. 73=1984
5. Thailand. 1 baht. yr.2505(I think)=1962.
6. China. 1 “cash” coin. These “square hole cash” coins were
minted over 2000 years ago and continued until about 1917.
I am not an expert on these, but could take the time to figure
it out, if it were worth it. It isn’t. Even the pieces that are 1000
years old are often only worth a dollar or so. They’re that
common in the world of world coins.
7. Pakistan. As I have already posted.
8. Japan. 10 sen. yr. 18=1943
If you really have to know about the square hole cash, I’ll do the work.