Why is the Japanese currency pronounced "yen" in English?


I'm wondering what the reason for the mispronunciation of 円 in English came to
be "yen". I can understand how some words like 東京 became "Tokyo", but "en" to
"yen" seems strange. On a side note, why is this symbol 「￥」 used to denote
currency? And would you pronounce that the same as 円 as well?




## Why is it pronounced "yen"?

I was actually wondering this a month or so ago, but found the answer on [the
Wikipedia article for
yen/en](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yen#Pronunciation_and_etymology).

> 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. ... In the 16th century,
> Japanese /e/(え) and /we/(ゑ) both had been pronounced [je] and Portuguese
> missionaries had spelled them "ye". Some time thereafter, by the middle of
> the 18th century, /e/ and /we/ came to be pronounced [e] as in modern
> Japanese, although some regions retain the [je] pronunciation. Walter Henry
> Medhurst, who had not come to Japan and 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 (1st ed. 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) in
> order to mirror the contemporary pronunciation, except "yen". This was
> probably already fixed and has remained so ever since.

## The Symbol ¥

As long as you are in Japan, ¥ is pronounced the same as 円. I'm not sure
exactly why the both exist, but I'd guess that it's the same reason that we
have "dollar" and "$" as well as "euro" and "€" \- ¥ is not a kanji or word,
but rather a symbol. Similar to these examples, even though ¥ comes before the
number, you would still pronounce it at the end of the number; ¥100 and 100円
would both be pronounced ひゃくえん.




## Why is it pronounced "yen"?

I was actually wondering this a month or so ago, but found the answer on [the
Wikipedia article for
yen/en](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yen#Pronunciation_and_etymology).

> 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. ... In the 16th century,
> Japanese /e/(え) and /we/(ゑ) both had been pronounced [je] and Portuguese
> missionaries had spelled them "ye". Some time thereafter, by the middle of
> the 18th century, /e/ and /we/ came to be pronounced [e] as in modern
> Japanese, although some regions retain the [je] pronunciation. Walter Henry
> Medhurst, who had not come to Japan and 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 (1st ed. 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) in
> order to mirror the contemporary pronunciation, except "yen". This was
> probably already fixed and has remained so ever since.

## The Symbol ¥

As long as you are in Japan, ¥ is pronounced the same as 円. I'm not sure
exactly why the both exist, but I'd guess that it's the same reason that we
have "dollar" and "$" as well as "euro" and "€" \- ¥ is not a kanji or word,
but rather a symbol. Similar to these examples, even though ¥ comes before the
number, you would still pronounce it at the end of the number; ¥100 and 100円
would both be pronounced ひゃくえん.

