The Bulgarian government will insist for a Cyrillic transliteration of the EURO, common European currency.

With the planned accession of the Balkan country, a third type of alphabet will join the Latin and Greek in the EU. When Sofia and Bucharest join the Union, its official languages will become 22.

The problem with the EURO comes from the Bulgarian way of pronouncing the word as "evro", unlike the commonly voiced "euro" in other member states.

Greece was the first country, which won the right to spell EURO on its banknotes in the Greek alphabet.

The official abbreviation of the European currency is EUR and it is registered as such in the International Standards Organization (ISO).

According to the EC's Frequently Asked Questions page the question whether the new European single currency will have the same name in all the Member States has a rather uninformative answer: "Yes, although it may be pronounced differently."

In the beginning of 2006, the Latvian government decided on a different spelling of EURO modifying it into "eiro" (pronounced as "aero"). Rejecting protests from the ECB, the Baltic member state intends to join the Eurozone in 2008 with this arrangement.

One of the easiest rules on the use of the euro to observe is EC's guideline that the plurals of both ‘euro' and ‘cent' are to be written without ‘s' in English.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!