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Fun trivia: When Americans went to East Asia with their funny money, the Asians quickly replaced the $ sign with a similar-looking local character: 弗. Nowadays
by kijin 12y ago
Fun trivia: When Americans went to East Asia with their funny money, the Asians quickly replaced the $ sign with a similar-looking local character: 弗.
Nowadays in Japan and Korea, you often see headlines like "1兆弗" (1 trillion U.S. dollars).
But 弗 originally means "not". So American money is not real money ;)
- cheapsteak 12y agoI've never seen 弗 in use in Chinese newspapers to refer to dollars. Any sources on this? Baidu-ing "兆弗" is only turning up results for a Shanghai company called "兆弗"
- kijin 12y agoSorry, here's an errata: The letter 弗 is commonly used in Korea and Japan. In China, the U.S. dollar is usually written as 美元 ("American yuan", but since both the dollar and the yuan derive from the thaler as the article says, it can mean "American thaler" as well).