h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Money, Dinheiro, Tsian, Geld… - A843969
Author: Anna Banana - U202024

This entry is about the evolution of the term 'money' in some languages and their interconnections. It nicely reveals some basic ideas behind the word 'money' - at least I hope so.

Anna Banana

Hi Anna B,

interesting entry. Like the original subject matter.

I'm not sure the title is quite right, myself. It's often best to choose a title that gives quite a clear idea of the content, and yours is not very revealing. You see what I mean? I'm not saying it isn't a good title in itself. For a magazine article or somthing, it would work well. Just that with it being part of a guide, where people can search for info, it doesn't give much info on what's inside.

One little point that occurred to me while reading... you use the word 'coin' once or twice, but don't give any info on it. Not that you need to. Just mentioning it.

Another thing that i wondered was about 'Geld'; I had assumed that the precious metal was the origin of this word for money. Similarly, the French word for money is really 'argent' lit. 'silver'. 'monnaie' really means 'change' or sometimes 'currency' although their is another word for 'currency' as in 'What is the currency in country x?' - 'devise'.

All very complicated, and thus so much the better to read this fascinating foray into the world of money-words.

all the best with this and future writings
spiff

Talking of 'pena' and 'moneta', there's also 'Penunzen' and 'Moneten' in German, although these are slang/colloquial words for 'money'.

Before the €, Austria used to have a 'Groschen' as the smallest unit (100 Groschen = 1 Schilling), whereas the German 'Groschen' denoted a 10 Pfennig coin.

'Geld' and 'Gold' don't have the same origin. I was very surprised, too, when I looked it up some time ago.

"which comes from ‘sol’ or salt"

In what language does sol mean salt? Did you mean to write "sal"?

In German: Sole = brine.

But she's drawing the origin to the latin "salarium", and none of its roots or derivatives contain "sol". It makes it look like the "o" came from nowhere. In any case the author should indicate where the root comes from.

I don't quite understand your problem ... as fars as I know, salarium has become 'Salz' or 'Sole' in German and 'soldi' in Italian. Such vowel transitions are very frequent.

not to belabor the point but, exactly what you wrote is what i mean. it should be "which comes from the german ‘sole’ or salt".

that's all.

This entry is generating some interesting discussion, Anna.

When I saw the topic, I thought it would be your entry.

As I have a busy weekend, I'll bookmark it and come back to it later.

intresting read

would honored if you read "power of M" A652745

I'd be very suprised if soldi had been derived from Sole. They must have a common ancestor.

-- Cefpret (who rarely goes on the lavatory without an ethymological dictionary)

WOW! Some research must have gone into that! Great entry.

Tango

'Argent' point taken - I meant more old-french. Argent means silver, monnaie means money. Today it is more common in France to use 'silver' as the word for money - I'll clear that up. Thanks.

Sol, salt, sallary: Looked it up again. Ok, I'll have to revise things - It is not quite right as I wrote it down. Soldi comes from Solidus (which means 'solid') and was the name of a golden coin - oops. It was probably me mixing up russian, german and latin. sorry - I'll fix that ASAP.

'Coins' I am sorry, but this would be enough material for another entry.

The title: I'd be glad to hear suggestions. (I'll think of something too)

Power of Money: I'll read that - thanks.

Again, thank you all for your input,

Anna Banana

Lieber Bossel:
(Dear Bossel)

Yep, the Groschen passage has been corrected. Thanks.

Anna Banana

pheloxi... Hell here, abusing Anna's account, power of m. huh?

I'll quote from 'the crash test dummies'

mmm...mmm...mmm...mmm



HELL

Slight correction needed here. Juno Moneta doesn't have anything to do with the moon. Moon in Latin would be 'luna'. Moneta is from 'monere', to warn or to Monitor. Juno the monitress.

If you were British (and old enough!) you'd be able to mention coppers, tanner, bob, florin, half a dollar (that's two and a kick), quid, guinea, fiver, tenner, pony, monkey.

Then there's US penny, nickel, dime, quarter, two bits, four bits, buck, greenback, sawbuck, century, monkey, grand.

Also, 'fee' is cognate with feu, feudal, fief, which are old words concerning the tenure of land (which could be arable) rather than cattle.

Thanks, Bels. Moneta, right... The interpretation I got was that it meant moonlike. Maybe it had something to do with the moon that acts as a 'monitor, warner'? I'll fix that - It'll be clearer in the way you suggest.

Plus: Coins, coppers etc. I didn't want to go into that as it would be too much here. We could start another Entry on that, what do you say?

'Fee' My etymological dictionary (Duden, which is the standard dictionary of German language) claims 'Vieh' and 'fee' have the common root 'feoh' which actually means 'cattle'. Maybe feudal evolved from there?

...Duden again on 'Feudal': Evolved from 'feum' (Italian 'fio', French 'fief') which in its turn evolved from Gothic 'faihu' (old English 'feoh') which means 'Cattle, Property'.

Bye, Bels, thank you very much for your input. Maybe the English etymology explains the whole evolution differently. But I think that the evolution I suggest makes sense, as it goeas from a simple thing to a more complex, ie. cattle --> feudal-system.


Anna Banana