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Japanese yen
The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third most traded currency in the foreign exchange market after the United States dollar and the euro.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.bis.org/publ/rpfx13fx.pdf )〕 It is also widely used as a reserve currency after the U.S. dollar, the euro, and the pound sterling.
==Pronunciation and etymology==
''Yen'' is pronounced "en" (:eɴ) in Japanese. The word (Shinjitai: 円, Kyūjitai: 圓) literally means "round" in Japanese, as ''yuán'' does in Chinese or ''won'' in Korean. Originally, Chinese had traded silver in mass (see sycee) and when Spanish and Mexican silver coins arrived, the Chinese called them 銀圓 (silver round) for their circular shapes,〔Mikami Ryuzo, an article about the yen in ''Heibonsha World Encyclopedia'', Kato Shuichi(ed.), Vol. 3, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2007.〕 The coins and the name also appeared in Japan. Later, the Chinese replaced 圓 with 元〔元 is not a simplified form of 圓, but a completely different character. 元 means "source" or "origin". One of the reasons for replacements is said to be that the previous character had too many strokes. Mikami op. cit.〕〔In 1695 Japan, certain coins were issued whose surface has the character 元 (gen). This is not a unit of money but abbreviation of 元禄(Genroku). See :jp:元禄丁銀.〕 which has the same pronunciation in Mandarin (but not in Japanese). The Japanese preferred 圓, which remains until now (albeit in its simplified form, 円, since the end of World War II).
The spelling and pronunciation "yen" is standard in English. This is because mainly English speakers who visited Japan at the end of the Edo period to the early Meiji period spelled words this way. ゑん/wen/ in historical kana orthography. In the 16th century, Japanese /e/(え) and /we/(ゑ) both had been pronounced and Portuguese missionaries had spelled them "ye".〔It is known that in ancient Japanese there were distinct syllables /e/ /we/ /ye/. From middle of 10th century, /e/(え) had merged with /ye/, and both were pronounced , while a kana for /ye/ had disappeared. Around the 13th century, /we/(ゑ) and /e/ ceased to be distinguished (in pronunciation, but not in writing system) and both came to be pronounced . S. Hashimoto ("国語音韻の変遷" (''The History of Japanese Phonology'') ) Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1950.〕 Some time thereafter, by the middle of the 18th century, /e/ and /we/ came to be pronounced as in modern Japanese, although some regions retain the pronunciation. Walter Henry Medhurst, who had neither been to Japan nor met any Japanese, having consulted mainly a Japanese-Dutch dictionary, spelled some "e"s as "ye" in his ''An English and Japanese, and Japanese and English Vocabulary'' (1830). In the early Meiji era, James Curtis Hepburn, following Medhurst, spelled all "e"s as "ye" in his ''A Japanese and English dictionary'' (1867). That was the first full-scale Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary, which had a strong influence on Westerners in Japan and probably prompted the spelling "yen". Hepburn revised most of "ye"s to "e" in the 3rd edition (1886)〔(Hepburn, James Curtis. All editions here )〕 in order to mirror the contemporary pronunciation, except "yen".〔http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/mgda/index5_j.html〕 This was probably already fixed and has remained so ever since.
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