Hello again and welcome back to Britain under the Microscope. 閑話英倫 Hello Anlan.
Hello everybody.
So today let's talk about something that is a very common topic, but I know as a British person you don't like talking about it. Can you have a guess?
Well, I would say it's got to be about money.
Yeah, we have done so many episodes of Britain under the Microscope, I have never talked about money and general attitudes. So I thought that would be something that our listeners would be interested in. Let's start with currency. We all know that it's pound. So one pound is a hundred penny? Pennies? A pence?
A pence. So pence is the official plural name for it. A penny is just literally one pence.
So you can say one penny, but two pence, three pence.
Or what we normally do in English, we'll just say p, so …
As the letter.
Yeah.
35p, 85p. Another question for you though, sometimes I hear, especially older people, when they talk about currency, they sometimes say sterling.
Yeah.
What does that mean?
Well, sterling is just another name for pounds. So there are some countries in the world that also have pounds. So pound sterling just means the British pound.
Oh, okay. So it's like US dollars, and you have pound sterling.
Yeah, pound sterling is actually one of the oldest continuing currencies in the world, was over about one thousand years.
Wow. So continuing means it was never interrupted.
No. So for example, there were pennies in Saxon times. So that's just over a thousand years ago. But pennies were worth a lot more and they were actually silver coins.
I bet. So let's talk about the banknotes nowadays. Banknotes 是紙幣。American English calls it bills, so you have five pounds, ten pounds, twenty and fifty.
So fifty pounds is the highest banknotes and you don't really see them that much around. Most of the time people use five or ten pounds.
I see, also see twenties, but you don't really see fifty. You can get fifty, you can get a fifty pound banknote from the bank, but you don't really use them or carry them around that much.
No, it's too difficult to spend.
That's it, fifty is the highest.
Well, not quite, no. In the Bank of England, the Bank of England is where our banknotes are printed. There are actually slightly higher banknotes.
Like how high, a hundred?
No, actually one million pounds or a hundred million pound banknote.
所以你們有100萬面值的紙鈔，and what, a hundred million pounds? 一億，why?
Well they're legal tender.
Really? You can use them?
Yeah. But they're only used inside the bank, so they're not used outside of the bank. They're not used in everyday currency and people don't really know what they look like because they are only used inside the bank.
Is it like an internal bank transfer?
Yeah but they are legal tender and obviously you can imagine they are very heavily guarded.
So technically, if I can find that one million pound or a hundred million pound banknote, I can use it.
Technically yes. But if you did try to use it then it will be very obvious.
It means you got it. OK. Another thing I've noticed is all your coins and banknotes have the image of the queen on them. I wonder if that will change when the queen, well, passes away.
You know it will be the next king or the next queen that will go on the banknote, but with the coins, it's, there's a little tradition. So nowadays the queen faces in one direction on the coin, but then when the next king takes the throne, the face will face the opposite direction.
Oh, and it will alternate, that's an interesting minor fact. OK. And another thing that I think we mentioned before. So Scotland, Scotland have their own banknotes.
Yeah. Basically, the Bank of England is only technically one bank. Scottish and Northern Irish banks they can actually print their own banknotes.
But it's still pound.
Yeah, it's still exactly the same currency. It's still exactly the same value, but they are allowed to print their own banknotes.
So those are legal tender, you can use them.
Yeah. And also places like Jersey or Guernsey and other parts of the UK, they do have their own banknotes.
Okay.
But in England, they're not that recognized because they're quite few of them, people don't feel comfortable accepting them. So, it's quite unusual to see Scottish banknotes or Northern Irish banknotes in England.
Perhaps they are worried about fake money. One thing I have noticed that we're here talking about all these formal ways of calling them pound, pence. But in real life, if you go to the UK, what you hear in spoken English is quite different. For example, it took me awhile to get used to people saying quid, q u i d, which is one pound. 就和美語里說 one buck, so English people would say one quid.
Or you could also say five quid or ten quid. But they are actually a few other slang words for banknotes especially, so for example a fiver.
A fiver, this is a five pound.
A tenner.
Ten pound?
And in London less so nowadays, but some people still use it, a score.
What is the score?
Twenty pounds?
Oh yeah. I have to admit I don't think I've ever heard a score, but a tenner, a fiver, a quid, you do hear them everyday. So, people would be like, do you have a tenner? Do you have a fiver? Well, I can't really do the accent, but this is what people say. To our listeners. If you read all these old classic literature by British writers, by English writers, you probably have come across really interesting words about money. So like shillings 幾個先令 or like farthings or guinea or crown. You don't have those anymore, do you?
No, that's what we call pre-decimal money. So in 1971, the currency changed and our currency became a lot simpler. So, as you say, you still hear about them in books or old films. And one of the reasons why they had to change it was because it's actually very, very confusing.

Yeah, it's never like one to ten, ten to a hundred, is always really weird numbers. For example farthings, how much was a farthing?
Well, four farthings made up one penny.
Okay four farthings is one penny.
And two half pennies or a penny made up one penny.
If you watch historical drama you do hear halfpennies. And shillings?
Twelve pence made up one shilling.
Okay.
Or sometimes it was called a bob.
A bob, that's a shilling. And what about a guinea?
A guinea was twenty one shillings, but one pound was actually twenty shillings.
OK. So you have pound and guinea at the same time. One is twenty shillings, one is two twenty one shillings. Yeah. That's the way to confuse people.
That's the thing, a lot of people used to get quite confused. But it was very good for people's math skills.
I guess so.
And apart from that, you obviously have five shillings which is a crown.
A crown. I'm kind of thankful that you guys changed it because otherwise it will be even more difficult for travelers who don't really know the system.
It is quite complicated.
Actually speaking of penny, I think we're gonna finish today's episode with a little bit more talk about penny. Penny is not just used in currency, but it's also, it seems to be used so often in your daily conversation, in idioms.
Yeah so for example, let's give you a very quick test.
Okay.
A penny for your thoughts.
Penny for your thought. I don't really know exactly how to translate this, but this is more like, I want to know what you think. So it's more like I'm offering the money and you tell me what you think.
Or for example, spend a penny?
Spend a penny. Doesn't that just mean spend a penny? I don't really know that the hidden meaning of ‘spend a penny’.
Spend a penny is quite old-fashioned term but people still use in a joking sort of way, spend a penny means go to the toilet.
Oh that's how much it cost!
Yeah a public toilet cost a penny, spend a penny means go to the toilet. And how about this one, the pennies dropped.
Pennies dropped. This is like, I know for the penny to drop, is to give people hints. Is that what it means?
Um, kind of, the pennies dropped means you suddenly realize something, you suddenly understand something.
Ah sorry my mistake. So basically, you give hints and hoping and waiting for the penny to drop.
Yeah. And this one probably is quite easy, a penny saved is a penny earned.
We say that in Chinese as well, a penny saved is a penny earned. So, no matter how small the amount, you have to save it. Um you have to be careful with money.
Um what about this one, to not have a penny to your name.
Meaning completely penniless.
Absolutely.
Completely broke.
So, no money whatsoever. And the final one, to be worth every penny.
To be worth every penny. It means this is very good value for the money that you paid.
Very good.
So, you can say that I paid, even though I've paid a lot for my new computer, but it's worth every penny.
Absolutely.
Okay on that note we're gonna wrap up today's basic episode about money. And next time in the advanced episode, we're going to go on to talk about the British attitudes towards money.
So, until then.
Let's see you next time, bye.
Bye.

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