Learn about British money, new and old! £££

Hi. I'm Gill at engVid, and today's lesson we're looking at British money, the UK currency.

Okay? And we're going to be looking at the present day currency, the notes and coins;

and then in the second part of the lesson, we'll be looking at the older currency, which

we had sometime in the past which is a bit different. Okay.

So, just looking briefly at the present day. I'll be showing you in a minute some actual

notes and coins. So, these are the main numbers of notes and coins, the pounds, and the pennies.

Okay? And just to explain: The "penny" is the singular, and there are two plural versions:

"pennies" and "pence". So, you can talk about 20 pence, 50 pence, or 50 pennies. Most people

say "pence" when they're giving the figure. 10 pence, five... Five pence, two pence, and

then obviously one penny or one p. Sometimes people just say: "P", just the letter "p".

50p, 20p. So, we use that as well. Okay, so let's have a look at some of the actual notes

and coins.

Okay, so here are some examples of the notes and the coins. And starting at the top...

We don't have a 50-pound note, unfortunately, but here is a 20-pound note in a nice mauve

colour. They all have the Queen's head on one side, Queen Elizabeth II. On the other

side, there's a portrait of a famous person who's made some big contribution to the national

life. So, we've got here Adam Smith, the economist, going back to the 18th century. Okay, so that's

a 20-pound note.

Next one, the 10-pound note. Again, the Queen's head. Now, there's a slang term for the 10-pound

note, which is a "tenner", t, e, double-n, e,r, "tenner", okay. So, turning this one over,

we have Charles Darwin, the scientist. Okay. 19th century.

And then moving on to the 5-pound note, and the slang term for this is a "fiver", f-i-v-e-r,

"fiver". And there's the Queen again, and on the back we have a woman this time. A token

woman, Elizabeth Fry, who was a prison reformer in the early 19th century.

Okay, so that's a fiver. Okay.

And then... Oh, moving down to here, this is... There is a 2-pound coin that's bigger

than this one but the same colour, 2-pound coin. This is a 1-pound coin, and the slang

term for that is a "quid", q-u-i-d. Okay. Then half of a pound is the 50, 50-pence piece.

And this has this distinctive edge; little, flat edges to it. Okay. And on the back, this

is the back of the coin, Britannia, the sort of female figure who represents Britain, Britannia.

Okay. And so that's 50p.

Moving on to the 20p piece. Okay, the Queen's head on the front and another design on the

back. That also has little, flat edges. Right. We don't have a 10p, but that's slightly bigger

than these 5ps, and has a circular edge. So these are 5ps, a 2-pence piece or a 2p, and

finally, 1p, one pence or one penny. They used to be a half... Half penny, but they...

They were taken out of the currency a few years ago because they were so worthless,

really. Okay, so that's the current currency, and let's just go back now and have a look

at a few more slang terms for money.

Okay, so we've just looked at the slang terms for the notes: "tenner", "fiver", and "quid".

And then there are a few other terms: "ready money" or "readies", that's, you know, cash.

"Cash" is another useful term. It's not a slang term, but people say they would like

to be paid in cash, or: "Do you have the cash?" So this is the "ready money", "readies", rather

than paying by credit card, or debit card, or cheque. Okay. "Folding stuff", that's the

paper notes. It folds up, so it's called the folding stuff.

There are two terms to do with food: "bread" and "dough". The dough is what you put in

the oven, and the bread is what you take out. "Bread" and "dough", that's also a word for

money. "Dosh", "loot", "lolly", they're all sort of quite comical, humorous terms for...

For money as well. Okay, so now we'll move on to look at the older currency.

Okay, so now let's have a look at the older currency before 1971. And the reason I'm showing

this-you may be wondering-is because if you're reading old books, old novels, like by Charles Dickens,

and novelists like that, Jane Austen - some of these coins that we no longer use

might be mentioned, like the "shilling" in particular. The shilling. Maybe "half crown",

a "florin", the "guinea". So, I'll just run quickly through these, and explain that we

had to have this decimalisation because we were joining the European community and we

needed to have a simpler currency, because all the other European countries had a currency

based on units of 10 and 100.

So, at this time, before 1971, we had 240 pennies in a pound, not 100 pennies. We had

a shilling, which came between the penny and the pound, so there were 12 pennies in a shilling,

and 20 shillings in a pound. Okay? We had a coin called a half crown, which I'll be

showing you in a minute, which was worth two shillings and six pence, so that's two and

a half shillings. A florin coin, worth two shillings. This line here is how the shilling

was shown, like that.

We had a 10-shilling note, so that was worth half a pound. And also we had a 1-pound note,

whereas now we have a 1-pound coin. And the smaller coins: six pence, three pence, one penny,

a half penny. And long before this... This was no longer used in the 70s, but a

quarter of a penny called a farthing, and I'll be showing you one of those. There was

also a guinea, this word could come up if you're reading old books, which was worth

one pound plus one shilling, i.e. 21 shillings, and that was quite an elite kind of coin that

was for sort of expensive dress shops and for men's suits. They were priced in guineas,

rather than pounds, and it just meant the shop got more money from people, so it was

a bit of a trick, really.

Okay, so let's have a look, then, at the actual coins.

Okay, so just to show you what some

of these coins look like. This is the half crown, two shillings and six pence. This is

the florin, worth two shillings. This is the shilling. That's the shilling, worth 12 pennies.

This is the six pence, six pennies, half a shilling. These... These are three... Worth

three pennies each. And this was the more recent one. This was a much older one, little

silver, three-penny pieces. Okay. These are the penny, which is quite big. This is the

ha'penny, half penny. And this is the farthing, worth a quarter of a penny.

Okay, so I hope you found that interesting. A little historical information that might

be useful for you if you're reading older literature. And just to mention, the present

currency, as I said, is the pound. We don't belong... Although we're part of Europe, the

European Union, we don't have the euro currency. Most of the other European countries do, but

in the UK we are not part of the euro currency, and I think most people don't want to be.

We want to keep our pound currency, so let's hope we do. So, I hope that's been interesting,

and if you'd like to do the quiz on this topic,

please go to the website, www.engvid.com and do the quiz.

And if you'd like to subscribe to my YouTube channel, that would be great.

And hope to see you again soon. Okay?

Bye for now.