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| Business Words in the News
Friday 28 December 2001
Vocabulary from the business news. Listen to and read the report then find explanations of difficult words below.
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Pre-euro monetary unions
Summary: The advent of the euro single currency has been described as the biggest monetary experiment in human history, but there are some earlier examples of monetary unions in Europe. This report from Mark Gregory:
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| | The News | |
| | | The first recorded attempt at a common currency came in Greece two and half thousand years ago. The city state of Athens introduced coins featuring a picture of an owl for its colonies and trading centres. They later became widely accepted in trade around the Mediterranean. In Roman times, the silver denarius and the gold aureus were the principal coins for a vast empire extending over most of Europe for more than three hundred years. They ultimately gave way to the solidus, the currency of the Byzantine Empire, based in Constantinople, which lasted for a thousand years. The solidus was popular in many parts of Europe, even as far north as Britain.
In medieval times, silver florins minted in Genoa and Florence and the Venetian ducat were common currencies for trade in Southern Europe. To the north, sterling was accepted in trade between Britain, what's now the Netherlands, northern France and parts of Germany. Much later, in the 1860s, Belgium, France, Italy and Switzerland formed what was known as the Latin Monetary Union. It was intended to counteract the instability of the French franc. Britain briefly considered joining. Scandinavian countries operated a successful monetary union for over half a century until the Second World War. But the biggest monetary event in modern European history, before the euro, came with the political unification of Germany. In 1873, six currencies used by around fifty million German-speaking people were replaced with what ultimately evolved into the mighty deutsch mark.
Mark Gregory, BBC
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| | The Words
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| | | common currency
money used in more than one country
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| | | accepted
if you accept something you agree to take it
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| | | trade
the activity of buying or selling goods or services
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| | | gave way to
were replaced by
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| | | medieval times
the period in European history between the end of the Roman empire and about 1500
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| | | minted
a mint is the place where a country's official coins are made: it is also used as a verb
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| | | counteract
to reduce the effect of something by doing something that has the opposite effect
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| | | instability
if something is subject to instability, it can change suddenly - for example, in value
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| | | monetary union
when two or more things are joined together to become one thing
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| | | political unification
the process by which two or more countries join together to become one country
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