Continuing List To Show Everyones Latest Acquisitions

Then why does Belgium not mint one coin with both languages?

I do not know.

Technically, I would say Canada mints coins in unilingual English. Cents in French is centimes. Of course, Quebec usually appropriates English words when it suits them such as 'Bon Weekend' vice 'Bon Fin de Semaine'. This way you could say that 'Dollar' is the same in both languages but in practice a lot of Quebecers call it a 'Piastre' if you want to sound old-timey. Our bills are printed with a French translation.

Now in the past, maybe 100 years ago, there were dual versions of bills such as the 1935 Princess Elizabeth $20. But once Canada took over minting the country's coins, the language hasn't really changed and one coin works for both. That's why I thought it was odd for Belgium to be minting dual streams of coins.

Don't we have any Belgians here who can sort this out? Well, until there is, I'll give it a shot then.

Belgium was formed in 1830 and the first Belgian coins appeared in 1832. They were in French only, not until 1886 were coins made with both French and Dutch text. From start there were separate issues for the two languages (bilingual coins were issued a couple of times during the 20th century).

One aestethic reason could be that Belgian coins had quite a lot of text: The king's name and his title, the country's name, the country's motto, the denomination - all different in the two languages. It would have been a coin crowded with text to have all of that in both French and Dutch. As a further complication, the smallest denominations featured the Belgian Lion resting its paw on a stone tablet with a tiny text on it referring to the Belgian constution of 1831. Making the stone tablet bilingual would certainly have cluttered things up ...

Another reason, perhaps (correct me Belgians, if you are out there), was that the Flemish - who spoke Dutch - did not consider it good enough to "share" coins with the French speaking Walloons; after all, they had had coins in their language for half a century, should the Flemish settle for anything less than their "own" coins? There was quite a bit of animosity between the two groups.

For any bilingual coins, one would also have to sort out which language should come first (or on top) of each coin ... some of the later bilingual issues solved this by shifting the order from one year to the next.

For Canada, the issue seems a little less complex (from what I can see, Canadian coins is really not my area ... ). Canada is Canada in both English and French, cent(s) seem to work in both languages (but do "les canadiens" really say "centimes"? ), there is no motto, and the royal title is written in Latin - smart!

Yes, yes, I know this thread is for recent acquisitions, so here is one - bilingual actually, so it fits the subject.

French protectorate of Tonkin 1905, 1/600 piastre, made of zinc. Interestingly, the denomination is in Chinese only.

An outstanding segue!

Let's now consider Switzerland with FOUR official languages...

They are smart. When necessary, they use their Latin name (Helvetica). They also abbreviate Franken, franc, and franco as Fr, and wisely leave Rappen, centime, centesimo, and rap off the coins altogether.

While I'm at it (upgrading my dansco albums of circulated cent, nickels, dimes quarters, and half dollars to BU coins) , I decided to also upgrade my Eisenhower dollars too.