“Shah” Instead of “Kopiika”:
Author’s Column | Tymur Levitin on Language, Meaning and Respect

“Shah” Instead of “Kopiika”:

What a Coin Name Reveals About Language, Memory, and Measure Before money becomes a matter of economics, it is a matter of language.Every currency reform begins not with coins, but with words — and words never change neutrally. The recent Ukrainian discussion about replacing kopiika with shah as the name of the smallest monetary unit […]

Timur Timur
02.01.2026 3 min read

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