Spelling and grammatical errors on coins

[Bimat]

Aditya,
Abhay's coin clearly shows a dot (or is it a diamond?) below the date. A product of Noida / Mumbai mint? or was this one of the foreign mints who were subcontracted for producing these coins due to severe shortages around the same time?

This particular coin was struck by Calcutta mint,but the same coin was also struck at Canadian mint in Winnipeg (or in Ottawa?),which is without any error.They have 'C' mint mark below the date.Since catalog uses 'C' for Calcutta mint,it is often mistaken as those error coins were minted at Canadian mint.

Aditya

[Austrokiwi]

With a 200+ year minting history the 1780 Maria Theresa Taler has a number of known error coins.  I have two in my collection.  The first one is a recognized error that occurred twice in the first half of the 19th century. The coin here is the more common ( of the two) Vienna Upper Arms strike. The error: the normal "AVST DUX" on the reverse is spelt "AVST DVX" the rarer coin was minted in Milan.



The next post will be of a rare 20th century spelling error.

[Austrokiwi]

This next spelling mistake MTT is attributed in Walter Hafner's Lexicon of the Maria Theresa Taler as a 1920s Vienna Strike. I have discussed this coin with Herr Hafner (by email) and he informed me he now believes it to be a 1960 Vienna strike. It's a subtle error that many people miss: ARCHID has been miss-spelt as ARGHID

[translateltd]

What to say about the denomination "cash" on Chinese coins, when the correct pronunciation is more like "kas" and "cash" is another British invention?

I don't know of any Chinese word that sounds even vaguely like "kas" - Chinese has no syllables ending in -s.  I think we got the word "cash" from one of the southern Indian languages (Tamil?), and have no idea at all what the proper etymology is in relation to the Chinese brass coins that we are all familiar with.

[translateltd]

Is it my eyes, or do those Micronesian things also say UBERTY instead of LIBERTY in the mottoes?

[chrisild]

I understand the Greek dilemma. I suppose the only real solution would be to use a Euro cent symbol instead of lettering. The numerals are universal amongst the Euro countries, so that shouldn't be a problem.

No reason to use a cent symbol. The official names of the two units, in singular and plural, are "euro" and "cent". If anybody - whether in the euro area or elsewhere - wants to adapt the terms to whatever is preferred locally, fine. So let them use "euri" or "euros", "centime(s)", "eurocent" or "sentti". In Ireland some like to append a plural-s while others don't. Here in Germany some pronounce the small unit "tsent" while most say "sent". So what?

So the coins will say euro/cent, without any regional variations. The only exception, as Peter wrote, is euro countries that use "non-Latin" characters. So Greece (with the Greek alphabet) and later Bulgaria (with the Cyrillic alphabet) may repeat the face value on the country-specific sides. Austria currently does it too, but if they ever modify their national sides, that would need to be removed.

As for spelling errors on coins, one came up a few days ago in a quiz question: The hexagonal 2 fr coin minted in Philadelphia for Belgian Congo (1943) said "Belgish" on the Dutch language type, instead of "Belgisch".


(Image: worldcoingallery.com)

German coins from Baden said "Grosherzog" instead of "Grossherzog" (Grand Duke) until 1907. But that was not a spelling error - just a regional variety. And then there is the Johannes Brahms collector coin that the GDR issued in 1972 - no spelling error but it depicts notes from one of his symphonies, and one of the five notes is wrong ...

Christian

[andyg]

I don't know of any Chinese word that sounds even vaguely like "kas" - Chinese has no syllables ending in -s.  I think we got the word "cash" from one of the southern Indian languages (Tamil?), and have no idea at all what the proper etymology is in relation to the Chinese brass coins that we are all familiar with.

The OED states that the word is Tamil in origin, translated into English it would be Cass, but ended up as Cash due to confusion with the already existing word.

Wikipedia has that the small coins were called 'Wen' in Chinese but I'm not at all sure what the source is for this.

[translateltd]

"Wen" (pronounced a bit like "one") would make sense, as that's the character commonly used for them (best description I can think of is that it looks a bit like a flat roof with a tilted chimney an an X below - I can't do characters on my laptop!); the same character is pronounced "mon" in Japanese and "mun" in Korean, and these are the standard catalogue terms for the "cash" coins produced in those countries.  I suspect the Vietnamese term (van) also maps to the same character.

[Figleaf]

AFAIK the Tamil word is Kasu. There's a Dutch colonial coin known as tammekas (Tamil Kasu).

Peter

[andyg]

"Wen" (pronounced a bit like "one") would make sense, as that's the character commonly used for them

We have a problem though, 'Wen' is the Pinyin translation of this character 文,
Pinyin I think though is quite modern, whilst the character is not....

[Figleaf]

Found in dictionary: Chinees (simplified) > Engels.
文   [wen] Pinyin

• a composition; an article
• a language
• civil; civilian
• literature; culture; education
• elegant; gentle; refined
• a former monetary unit
• to owe nothing
• a Chinese family name
• to cover up; to conceal; to gloss over

[andyg]

Found in dictionary: Chinees (simplified) > Engels.
文   [wen] Pinyin

• a composition; an article
• a language
• civil; civilian
• literature; culture; education
• elegant; gentle; refined
• a former monetary unit
• to owe nothing
• a Chinese family name
• to cover up; to conceal; to gloss over

As I understand it the character means those things, 'Wen' though is a modern translation, so before Pinyin the translation may not have been 'wen' though the character has always been used.

[translateltd]

We have a problem though, 'Wen' is the Pinyin translation of this character 文,
Pinyin I think though is quite modern, whilst the character is not....

That's the character.  I don't see the problem, as the name for the coin is 文 (in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam), and it's just pronounced differently in these countries.  The "English" transliteration is not highly relevant as long as it gets the sound across.  (From memory, I think the old Wade-Giles transliteration used "wen" for this character (or maybe wên), so it doesn't differ drastically from Pinyin, which dates from around the 1950s.)  In other words, how we transcribe it doesn't alter the term that may have been used in the home territories for many centuries.

(Please, no smarties go telling me that Korea and Vietnam don't use characters to any great extent these days, if at all.  I know.  The words in their current writing systems still for the most part represent an underlying Chinese character, regardless.)

The key point, which led to this discussion, is that "wen" sounds nothing like "cash" :-)  However, the anglicised "cash" form appears to have been readily used in China proper in the early 20th century, as it is found on machine-struck bronze coins, often alongside equivalent Chinese text containing the character 文 - isn't cut-and-paste wonderful, btw?

[chrisild]

Two more spelling errors. The first one is a 1 peso coin from Argentina  which depicts an old Argentinian coin. The original piece, and most of those 1 peso coins, use the correct spelling PROVINCIAS. But this 1995 variety (minted in Llantrisant) says PROVINGIAS:



Then there is a 5 piastres coin from Egypt (1972/1392) which says UNICFE instead of UNICEF. See attachment.

The spelling "KONINGRIJK" vs "KONINKRIJK" (see initial post) is discussed here:
http://www.worldofcoins.eu/forum/index.php/topic,5413.0.html#msg33906

Now as for those pieces "from" Micronesia, well, don't know whether they are actually coins. The Schön says they are private issues ...

Christian

[Figleaf]

There is a variety of the British sixpence 1879 with DRITTANIAR. The whole mintage (10 188) with the wrong inscription was sent to Cyprus. Of these, 6160 were returned to London when the error was discovered.

Peter