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comment by thenewgreen
thenewgreen  ·  4348 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pirate Money

Nice to know the origins, made all the more interesting by the fact that my grandfather's name is Joachim. -I now feel more connected to my currency.

I have a 2 year old daughter that watches Mary Poppins at least twice a week. We will be out and about and she will randomly bust in to song feed the birds tuppins a bag... It got me wondering, what exactly are tuppins? Turns out its the word tuppence, which is slang for "two-pence". This makes sense since Michael, the boy in the movie, is holding two coins.

Aside: mk are you still collecting?





StJohn  ·  4347 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You might get a kick out of this - it's an Australian ad for when they converted to decimal currency in 1966. The arithmetic (and the music) is excruciatingly awful!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZTeWLA1LAs

thenewgreen  ·  4346 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Great piece of propaganda, thanks for the link. I like how dollar bill winces in annoyance until he gets to do the conversions in decimals, then it's all smiles.

StJohn  ·  4347 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The lingo takes a bit of getting used to. They also used to say "ha'pny" for half-penny and "thruppence" for three pence. Almost makes me want to visit pre-decimal Britain just to see how badly I'd do with the coins.