Etymology of the Korean currencies Etymology of the Korean currencies The won is the currency of both North and South Korea. "Won" is a cognate of the Chinese currency unit, the yuan, and the Japanese currency unit, the yen, meaning "round object". The won is subdivided into 100 jeon (전; 錢; McCune-Reischauer: "chŏn"; Revised Romanization: "jeon"). Yang is a former Korean currency. It is a cognate of the Chinese tael (pronounced "liǎng" in Chinese). The yang was subdivided into 100 fun (pronounced "pun" but spelt with an "f" on the coins). Fun (푼) is a cognate of the Chinese word fen (分 fēn), referring to
Y [ɘ]. Similarly, in Middle Welsh, Y came to be used to designate the vowels /ɨ/ and /ɘ/ in a way predictable from the position of the vowel in the word. Since then, /ɨ/ has merged with /i/ in Southern Welsh dialects, but /ɘ/ is retained. In Modern English, Y can represent the same vowel sounds as the letter I. The use of the letter Y to represent a vowel is more restricted in Modern English than it was in Middle and early Modern English. It occurs mainly in the following three environments: for upsilon in Greek loan-words ("system": Greek σύστημα),