Sunday, February 17, 2008

Japanese Yen


The yen (円, en ) or en is the currency of Japan. It is the third most-traded currency in the foreign exchange market after the United States dollar and the euro. It is also widely used as a reserve currency after the U.S. dollar, the euro and the pound sterling. The ISO 4217 codes for the yen are JPY and 392. The romanised symbol is ¥ while in Japanese it is also written with the kanji 円. While not a usage specific to currency, large quantities of yen are often counted in multiples of 10,000 (man, 万) in the same way as values in the United States are often quoted or rounded off to hundreds or thousands.
In standard Japanese, the yen is pronounced "en" but the spelling and pronunciation of "yen" is standard in English, due to a historical Portuguese transliteration. The inclusion of the letter y is based on romanization of an obsolete writing of the word which included the kana ゑ (ye/we), examples of which can also be found in such words as Yebisu, Iyeyasu, and Yedo (it was still pronounced, however, as e). Like the spellings of names of people outside Japan, the romanization of yen has become a permanent feature.

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