Talking About Money...

Earlier this week my co-worker James and I were at the local McDonald's (well, technically it's one of two in this city) for a quick bite to eat between classes. I mentioned in the course of the conversation that one thing I probably won't see when I go back to Canada is the lowly penny. That led to talking about the American one dollar bill (James is from the USA) and the refusal of Americans to replace the bill with a coin as has been done in Canada. James knows of the loonie and toonie and at that point in time he went on like "You guys have what...oh yeah...that loonie and toonie". He stopped right there and his face lit up. "You know, 'toonie' is perfect because it combines the English 'two' with the Japanese 'ni'(二)". That took a second to sink in for me. I've always thought of the two dollar coin name as "toonie" instead of "twonie" which is probably how James thinks it's spelled. So there you go. A little bit of word play based on the name of a coin.