So I'm not the only one doing it
When we switched over to the euro last year, I began to understand why my grandmother used to work out the value of things in shillings (a pound stayed the same: 5c was equivalent to a shilling, and for those who don’t know this, 20 shillings were a pound) and even guineas. We used to pull her leg about this, unable to understand why she did it. But as January 2008 slid into the months that followed, I found myself doing the same. Now that the mandatory dual-pricing period is long past, I am still working out the arithmetic in my head or, when I am really tired, asking the shop assistant whether I can borrow a calculator.
A friend who moved to Britain from Malta told me the trick is to just stop, to wipe the ‘old money’ from my mind. But I explained that it’s not the price in liri that I want as such, but the value. A sense of value, of what things are worth, is acquired over time and is tied to a particular currency. That’s why a child might think that a flat costs ten pounds and a box of Lego bricks fifteen pounds. My sense of value is framed in liri, not euros. When somebody tells me that X costs 500 euros, the first thing I need to work out is whether it’s worth the price. To do this, I have to convert the price to pounds. Then I know whether it’s worth the money or not. It looks like it’s going to be ages before I develop a sense of value in euros. I was feeling a bit nervous about this until I read the results so far of www.timesofmalta.com’s current poll and found that I am not alone.
A year after the introduction of the Euro, are you still calculating costs in Maltese liri?
yes 68.5%
sometimes 20.0%
no 11.5%
Total votes: 4480
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When I was in Malta last month, I noticed that everybody still spoke about liri, and it drove me nuts! It’s the same here in France – anybody over the age of 30 or so, will still speak about francs. I have changed from liri to sterling and then to euros, and never do the conversion. Actually I’m paid in sterling, so I should make that comparison, but I don’t. I don’t really know what the secret is though. I do know that I tend to spend less because 100 euros seems like a lot of money, whereas Lm30 doesn’t. I guess I just look at it as a number.
“I was feeling a bit nervous about this until I read the results so far of http://www.timesofmalta.com’s current poll and found that I am not alone.”
Same here. Some time ago I was with my bank manager and we were discussing a loan, and HE was referring to the sum in Maltese liri , same as I was.
@Steve
You wrote: ‘Actually I’m paid in sterling, so I should make that comparison, but I don’t.’ You don’t need to anymore. Just like myself, you’re screwed!
I have finally more or less stopped. Annoyingly enough I have now instead started comparing it more and more to the Swedish Krona again, so it’s not exactly an improvement. Oh how I wish Sweden would bloody switch to the Euro sometime real soon as well.
@Daphne
Try to calculate the price tag with the amount one earns per hour/day/week/month/year. It is much more efficient, gives a real value to what one is buying and you will forget the old currency faster.
The problem with your approach is that if you persist in using Liri you’re going to end up with a false sense of value. Would the exchange rate still have been 2.33 after the economic turmoil of 2008? Is something that you’re paying €10.00 for still “worth it” today? At some point you, and everyone, will have to switch to euros as otherwise you’ll end up doing what my parents used to do and tell us how they could buy a lot of stuff with “a shilling which is 5c in today’s money”.
Get used to it – the lira will never return so no point in using that as your benchmark (although I do admit to using the conversion for a few months).
‘the first thing I need to work out is whether it’s worth the price. To do this, I have to convert the price to pounds’
you mean Lira not pounds, no?
[Daphne – No, I mean pounds. The lira stayed the pound to English-speakers. Both words mean the same thing: they hark back to a pound of silver. Lira, like the French ‘livre’ and the Italian ‘lira/e’ is a corruption of the Latin ‘libra’, the scales used for weighing out the silver with which people once paid for things. In Spanish, it continued to be ‘libra’. Even when the currency in Malta was the old pound, it was called a ‘lira’ in Maltese for this same reason.]
Dear Daphne,
From 1972 till 2008, Malta’s currency was the Lira, not the pound. Might you be confusing the two?
[Daphne – Not at all. Read my reply above. The words lira and pound mean the same thing. They are not words magicked out of thin air. More to the point, the pound and the new ‘lira’ were perfectly equated when the lira was introduced, deliberately so – the intention was to have the same unit of currency but to ‘Mediterraneanise’ the name in accordance with the political philosophy of the time. So the pound made up of 20 shillings became the ‘lira’ made up of 20 x 5c pieces, each of which had the equivalent value of a shilling. When was the decimal system introduced – 1974? In the 34 years after that I never once heard a single ‘English-speaking’ Maltese person say ‘this cost forty lira’, but always ‘this cost forty pounds’. This wasn’t because we were all thinking in terms of the old currency – I certainly wasn’t, having been in primary school when it was replaced – but because Maltese English-speakers say pounds and not lira. English tourists said lira because they didn’t have the background to it, and saw it as an exotic currency like the Italian lira. I clearly remember that even when we used the old pound, when speaking Maltese people said ‘liri’ not ‘pounds’. As a child I don’t remember my parents saying ‘Dan jiswa hmistax-il pound’ but ‘dan jiswa hmistax-il lira.’]
The upbeat thing about it is that the constant recalculation (if done mentally) should keep our brains supple, vigorous and win us some mileage against Alzheimer.
We are back to square one.
One shilling = 12 pence= 5 maltese lira cents = 12 euro cents.
So if old people remember the penny , it is equivalent to the euro cent (for practical purposes).
So when something costs ,say 25 euro cents its value is two shillings (one penny).
‘Liri’ and ‘Pounds’ confused everyone locals, but mainly British tourists! We, hotel workers, had to make sure we said the right word – Lira / Liri. Thanks to the euro, that’s all over!
Hi Daphne,
I did not have that conversion problem (in fact I am one of those 11.5% who voted no in the poll)! I started using the euro in 2005 as I used to travel a lot in Italy and hence buy many things from there. In fact I found it quite annoying when I used to buy from Malta and the shopkeepers used to ask me “in Maltese liri or euros hi?”. I used to ask them “what currency am I paying you with hi, euros or liri?” I assure you that your British friend’s suggestion that “the trick is to just stop, to wipe the ‘old money’ from your mind” will work wonders. If you want to value any item just compare products ‘like with like’ and choose the cheapest or what’s the best for you. You still probably have to buy the required item anyway. I hope that this little bit of advice make you will feel better when when shopping.
May I take this opportunity to wish you and all your readers “A Happy ans Peaceful New Year”.
I too still find myself mentally converting into Maltese pounds to calculate whether the item is worth buying or not. Daphne, what do you think about Joseph Muscat’s new year resolution, published yesterday in The Sunday Times? Please do give us your comments about it because I for one think it is way out of line for a party leader to publicly say that he is hoping that 2009 will be a boring year so that he can spend more time with his family. There is a difference between hoping secretly for something like that and expressing it in public….talk about lack of enthusiasm!
[Daphne – I know. One of my sons waved that particular newspaper page in front of my face yesterday morning, laughing in disbelief (he belongs to the age group Joseph Muscat thinks he is going to attract with his ‘youth’). I get the feeling the man has peaked already.]
Further to my previous comment about Joseph Muscat, I do not find anything wrong with him aspiring to find more time to spend with his family. Nothing wrong in that. What I find weird is the fact that he is hoping to do this at the expense of the whole country having a boring year rather than finding the time himself.
[Daphne – He’s egocentric, Anna. Like many only sons of older parents, he thinks the world revolves around his navel and that the sun rises and sets in the seat of his trousers. People who grow up as only children, most particularly when they are boys, which means that the mother dotes even more, experience their crucial formative years in a way that builds their perception of themselves as pivotal to the existence of those around them. Their way of relating to others and to their environment is fundamentally and intrinsically different to that of those who grew up as one of several children. I’d guessed he was an only child even before I asked and had my suspicion confirmed. He is the CLASSIC only boy, a textbook case.]
I think that Maltese people my age (closing on 50) must have used an absolute record number of different currencies and coinage as legal tender in our lifetimes. We started with the pound sterling which was divided into 20 shillings or 240 ‘old’ pence (and I still remember halfpennies and farthings too), then when the UK went decimal in 1971, although Malta didn’t decimalize at the same time we still used 10 and 5 ‘new pence’ coins. A year later we went decimal and divided our pound (or lira in Maltese) into one hundred cents, each of which was worth 10 mils. A few years later we changed the name of our pound to ‘lira’ though as you say, the terms were used interchangably by most people. However, as Christian said, those of us in the tourist trade were careful to use the words lira/liri when dealing with foreigners. The mils coins were withdrawn from circulation (in 1994 according to Wikipedia) and as we all know the euro came in a year ago. So we’ve used pounds, half-crowns, florins, shillings, sixpences, threepences, pennies, halfpennies, farthings, 5 and 10 New Pence pieces, 2,3 and 5 mils coins, liri, 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50 cent and LM1 coins and the euro lot. An incredible variety, I think, for a forty year span.
But, as for ‘thinking in liri’ (or pounds if you will) – it’s simply a case of getting accustomed to euro prices. When I first moved to Vienna 3 years ago I re-calculated prices all the time. Now I only convert prices into liri – in order to appreciate the true value – for things that I rarely buy, consider buying or am interested in, such as cars and houses. I think this is natural because I’ve only bought cars and property in liri so my mind does not automatically appreciate the value of a €123,000 property. I much prefer to regard it as a LM53,000.00 flat. By now you should have reached the stage of knowing the value of a lot of the stuff you buy (or sell) regularly. The price of milk and bread should spring to mind in euros, for example whilst furniture still requires conversion but you’ll get there in time. It just takes practice, or rather usage.
I feel exactly the same. However, I think it’s normal. I compare currency with weight, temperature, mass and volume. When I see a recipe, I understand fully the quantities if there is 500g of something. However, if the quantities are expressed in some other system (imperial, Australian, and so on), I’m rather stumped and would have to convert to fully understand the quantities. Same thing if I had to weigh myself in pounds (truth be told, however, no matter the system I use, I still get a fright!!).
So, I guess independently of the matter, it all boils down to “value”.
@ Tim Ripard : the farthing(Habba) was specifically minted for Malta in the beginning of the 1900s; it was already out of circulation in the sixties.
In Luqa there was a begger who used to say “tini sitta ha ntik sold” instead of the other way round!
And I thought I was the only one still calculating in liri. In fact I still run around with that little converter we had received in the mail to help me out.
I never used that calculator. What I do is work out the difference in my mind. Liri to euros , you multiply by seven and divide by three Euros to Liri, you multiply by three and divide by seven. A practical approximation I think.
Tim Ripard:
Do you remember the three-pences , the two shillings coin and the two-and-six?
I remember a time when the last two were made of real silver and were very much in demand. A relative of mine used to make beautiful silver necklaces from these coins, by retaining the leafy designs and removing the rest with special instruments.