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[Sweeney Todd]

Bison
Corps
Deer
Means (as in a means to an end)
Moose
Referendum
Series
Sheep
Species

Except for one, all of these are examples of countable nouns which do not change their form from the singular to the plural.

Can you spot the odd one out, Children?

Yen is another example of this. It is the same in the singular and the plural but it is still a countable noun.

[gaijinalways]

Yes, I have come to believe that. It fits the rule of currencies being countable, it just happens to be an irregular noun that is the same whether in the plural or singular form (like the previously offered 'sheep' example).

The question 'How many yen do you have?' (versus 'How much money do you have?') still sounds odd though. I suppose it might more likely come up in a traveling situation, where one might have several currencies, but someone is asking about a particular one, yen.

[kinshachi]

[JonnyB61]

[Sweeney Todd]

[Henry_Cowell]

Any unit of money such as yen is countable. But when we use the word yen in English, we don't form the plural by adding the letter s, even though yen is countable. Many posters have already provided sufficient explanation of this point.

So I think you have your answer, JonnyB:

yen is a countable noun in English. Its plural is yen.

"I have 3,000 yen."
"Do you have some yen?"
"I don't have any yen."

The only criterion for countability is whether we can speak about (and "count") separate items or if we must talk about an undifferentiated mass.

"I have a lot of money." (Money itself is an uncountable mass of the stuff, but units of money are countable.)

"I have a lot of yen." (Yen are countable because they are defined to be units of money.)

[Yawarakaijin]

I'll put my two yen in again

Even though my post my nominated as "most boring post ever" I will stand by what I wrote before.

Although yen is clearly a countable noun like dollars or pounds or what have you, there are certainly unique situations where we treat it as being a non-count noun.

I'm not a linguistics major and am incapable of describing exactly what happens in our brain to make it so, but please tell me which sounds more natural to you.

"How much yen do you have on you?"
or
"How many yen do you have on you?"

Am I wrong in stating that within Japan, among foreigners, the 1st example is heard much more often?

I will however vote that yes, yen is a countable noun.

[DNK]

I will reiterate that, at least for me, the reason why "much" sounds correct is because "yen" is mentally equated with "Japanese money". The reason it is used and not just money is probably due to the fact that it is considered fundamentally different to someone unaccustomed to thinking of money in international terms, and who would have an image of it as dollars/pounds.

This is, of course, regardless of the fact that it is fundamentally the same thing.

"Japanese money" is probably not used because it sounds awkward as hell.

Does anyone feel differently? This makes the most sense, personally, as any native speaker should immediately spot "much dollars/sheep/books" as wrong; so there must be a psychological difference between yen and dollars in these cases.

[Yawarakaijin]

I made the exact same point in another thread. I also imagine it to be some kind of (insert correct linguistic term here) where the meaning of YEN to us (foreigners living in Japan) is bascially treated as money and thus ,when it comes to using much and many, is treated as such.

Not a hard concept to imagine, but I got in trouble for it.

[Sweeney Todd]

[Stephen Jones]

[Henry_Cowell]