StCirq

Where I spend time in France, it's only old people who still call them centimes. Most people under 80 always call them cents, and do the same in writing. Every French check I've received in the last 10 years or so has "cents" written on it on the line where you write the amount of the check.

Pvoyageuse

I am not yet 80 ........

"Comme préconisé par la Commission générale de terminologie et le Conseil national de la consommation, pour éviter des homonymies gênantes pour la compréhension et donc l'usage commode de la monnaie, le terme « centime » doit être utilisé en France. D'ailleurs l'article L111-1 du Code monétaire et financier stipule : « la monnaie de la France est l'euro. Un euro est divisé en cent centimes ». Pour les mêmes raisons que pour le nom « euro » (cf. ci-dessus), l'expression « EURO CENT » figure, invariable, (en capitales et sur deux lignes, avec une police de caractères plus grande pour CENT que pour EURO) sur le côté pile des pièces.

Ainsi, sur les pièces, par exemple, de 5 centimes, il est écrit 5 EURO CENT, mais on dit couramment 5 centimes. Pour parler d'une somme de 500,05 €, on ne dit pas cinq cents euros et cinq cents, mais cinq cents euros et cinq centimes. Le mot cent est essentiellement utilisé dans les langues étrangères comme dans « fünfhundert Euros und fünf Cents »."

flanneruk

"Wow, that flanner is one grumpy, Yank-o-phobic dude."

While the obnoxious Yank making inane jokes about shrapnel is just expressing an unobjectionable opinion, is he?

I'm not remotely Yankophobic. Or even grumpy. I just proceed on the assumption that Yanks who point out the mote in others' eyes have to expect the odd reminder about the bloody great beam in theirs.

Never works of course. They can hand it out but can't take it when it's handed back.

kybourbon

>>>cent in Germany.<<<

Wiki has Germany listed as Euro and Cent while the majority of other countries are listed euro and cent.

>>>What do we call the change in Euros<<<

Many places it is euro, not euros.

sparkchaser

<i>Wiki has Germany listed as Euro and Cent while the majority of other countries are listed euro and cent. </i>

Well that's because nouns are capitalized in German, Mr. Pedantic.

caroline_edinburgh

This post is tagged Italy so I assume the question is what are they called in Italy - which is centesimi, as previously stated, and the word is certainly used.

Michael

I write it out as "cents" in my French checkbook but will say "centimes" when speaking.

hetismij2

Back in the good old days of the Guilder we had nicknames for coins, such as stuiver and dubbeltje. They haven't transferred to the euro though. One, kwartje couldn't anyway since there is no 25c coin.

xyz123

Has the eu de-monetized the 0,01 and 0,02 euro coins? Or is it just a country vy country thing (yes in Holland evidently). And dear friend flanneruk made a comment about in Ireland using euro as the plural of euro...actually from what I understand that's the official line but then the eu says if a language (say English) uses "s" commonly for plural, it's okay to call them euros but many throughout euroland use euro as the plural of euro.

PalenQ

My French son who grew up in France says he always called it a "centime d'euro" and many folks did.

hetismij2

It depends on the country whether they use 1 and 2 cent coins. The Dutch had long given up on the Guilder equivalent and quickly dropped the eur coins.
Technically if you offer them in payment the shop must take them, but I have no idea what reaction you would get if you tried.
We get them in change in Spain, and try to get rid of them before heading for home. If we still have a few they go in a charity box at Schiphol.

Peter_S_Aus

In Italy, they still use the one and two cent coins - especially in supermarkets.

If the bill comes to 49.99, you will get no change out of a fifty euro note.

But in Venice, if the bill comes to 50.01, you had better make with the one cent.

In Australia, we dumped the one and two cent coins a decade ago - the five cent coin will be next to go, probably is five or ten years time.

colduphere

It's hard to make cents of all these different answers.

vincenzo32951

>>I'm not remotely Yankophobic. Or even grumpy. <<
Thanks for the laugh.

xyz123

Boy, things have changed in Italy since the first time I visited in 1971. There was a perpetual shortage of small denomination coins then. I will never forget buying the International Herald Tribune (yes once upon a time long long ago I actually bought newspapers; now I read them on-line each morning). In any event, the paper cost 180 Italian lire. So I handed over 200 lire (or is it lira but it sure wasn't liras) and the shopkeeper gave me two pieces of bubble gum. I started off thinking what a wonderful country. They give you bubble gum when you buy something. Then it dawned on me I hadn't received my 20 liras change. So in my best phoney Italian accent I asked where my 20 liras were (or is it lire?). The shopkeeper pointed at the bubble gum and then it dawned on me the way it worked.

Of course at that time, too the national Italian bank had a shortage of low denomination bank notes. So local banks began printing their own. One small problem. If you got one for say 500 in Venezia from a local bank, they wouldn't take it in Roma.

And you wonder why credit cards aren't the better way to go?

StCirq

Of course it's not pronounced like cents in English. But fact is, I'm looking at a French check right now, written to me on a Crédit Agricole check, that says my name, with the date filled in, followed by "deux cents euros et 83 cents." Like every check I've received over the past 10 years. Maybe the standard is "centimes," maybe the banks don't care, but everyone I deal with in France these days says "cents," not "centimes,"' which they consider old-fashioned, which is why the "old" people seem to prefer it, as they did with francs when the EU switched over to euros. My neighbors continued to think and count in francs for quite some time.

Michael

<i>but everyone I deal with in France these days says "cents,"</i>

One reason I don't say it is that the word needs to be pronounced with a vocalized "n" and "t", which grates against my pronunciation habits; otherwise it sounds like the word for 100.

StCirq

Me too, but I hardly ever have to SAY it.

caroline_edinburgh

I'm not sure why so many are still on about France, Germany etc when the OP clearly tagged their question Italy. Like I said, the answer is centesimi - pronounciation for English speakers, ChentESimi.

Dayenu

My 2 cents:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro