When not referring to the actual Mongolian currency, what nuances does the term "тугрик" have, if any?
For example, does it imply that the currency is weak?
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It's rather a metaphor than a slang, introduced by some writers, and if you find it in literature, that actually may mean that currency or some similar currency of unknown name ( in time when precious metal coins were still in use , late XIX century mostly, tugriks could have extended area of use among sailors). But as modern colliquial it's a jokingly given name for any strange currency (e.g. curency for microtransactions in games) – Swift Apr 18 '17 at 05:39
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by the way., originally it was just local name of chinese coins. chinese transliteration of that word, that literally meant coin, is still used as official name for chinese currency :P – Swift Apr 18 '17 at 05:47
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@Swift - You should know that Mongolia is exactly the very place on Earth which is situated the farthest away from seas and oceans than any other place on Earth, that's why sailors can hardly use tughriks. ;) And more precisely, "tughrik" means " round", not "coin". – Yellow Sky Apr 19 '17 at 19:52
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not to mention tugrik was not introduced before XX century and has never been in wide circulation outside Mongolia – Quassnoi Apr 20 '17 at 02:45
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@Yellow Sky "round coin" , "round object" . 'round" and coin in that case are synonyms. Strangest synonyms exist, e.g. in Russian word for female genitalia is synonym for prospect of being beaten. Mongolian , Vietnamese and Korean currency in their name all derived from Chinese coins. The phrase I mentioned was actually meaning Chinese money unit , depicted by round solid coin, otherwise known as yuan (not modern renminbi currency).If you not know, they had round, hex, square coins, round coin was "whole". Officially MNT exist from 1926, said quote dated by ~30 years before that. – Swift Apr 20 '17 at 20:12
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@Quassnoi toegroeg is same thing as old yuan coin, before MNT – Swift Apr 20 '17 at 20:16
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@Swift - I know everything about coins since I'm a numismatist. The first tugrik coin was minted in 1925 and was the same size and the same silver as the then Soviet 1 rouble coin (all the rest of the coins were also made the same size and metal as the Soviet ones), because Mongolia was actually a province of Soviet Russia. Before that Mongolia had been a province of China and, naturally, Chinese coins circulated there, they didn't have any special coins for Mongolia before 1925. During the reign of the Mongolian Yuan dynasty in China there were no coins, Mongols introduced paper money. – Yellow Sky Apr 20 '17 at 20:48
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Yellow Sky before that they used russian imperial coins (silver) and chinese imperial coins (varied), shortly they had "mongolian dollars", but i think, those were only bank notes? Yuan dinasy is not related at all. it's different word, we just use wrong transliterations of qián , 錢 – Swift Apr 20 '17 at 21:05
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@Swift - Maybe it's a different word, but yuan currency unit is 元 and the Yuan dynasty is 元朝, there's something common in them, aren't there? "Coin" in Chinese is 硬币 yìngbì, not yuan as you wrote in you second comment here, 圓 yuán means "round, circle", the seme "coin" appeared in that word quite late, the end of the 19th cent. Mongolian dollars were printed, but not issued into circulation, but in Mongolian script they were still named "tugrik", see it yourself: clickable pics, and originally "yuan" was also translated as "dollar" on coins and banknotes. – Yellow Sky Apr 20 '17 at 21:52
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Yellow Sky Ah, I see, dollar - taler, a coin from Europe and so on, I can see why they were doing that. The problem with writen symbol is that ther is no unified way to read and ofter there are varint how to writeand there is more than 40 languages that were "Chinese" if we take in account history. over 20 still present. Modern scripture is "simplified chinese" and official pronuncation is mandarin - only one language of those 20. – Swift Apr 20 '17 at 22:06
3 Answers
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It usually metaphorically means "some obscure local currency", hardly known and hardly usable outside the country of origin; "some kind of monetary surrogate of limited use and circulation" (such as chits, company store vouchers, in-game currency in online games etc.).
It's close in meaning to English "monopoly money" or "funny money".
В портах, куда мы заходили, нам выдавали ― донги или еще какие тугрики.
Я не стал говорить Владимиру, что местные тугрики тоже называются долларами
Тут надо заметить, что в Мексике местные тугрики обозначают таким же значком, как доллары
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The term as a reference to exotic currency was widepread during times of Soviet international contracts. Since nineties, the meaning became broader.
Phonosemantically and similar to cockney rhyming slang, the term implies a joking attitude (towards the topic, the situation, the currency, goods, etc.).
In this context it can refer not just to an exotic monetary unit, but to Russian roubles or more usual currency as well:
Есть тугрики?
Давай тугрики!
Manjusri
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As a native speaker I understand it as just a slang term for "money", similar to "капуста", not sure that teenagers are using it, probably adult audience is more inclined to use it ;-)
Iason
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капуста got relation with US slang terms.. and got long time relationship with now obsolete "greenbacks". – Swift Apr 18 '17 at 05:36