Reserve currency economy, the German Deutsche Mark gained the status of the second most important reserve currency after the US dollar. When the euro was introduced on 1 January 1999, replacing the Mark, French franc and ten other European currencies, it inherited the status of a major reserve currency from the Mark. Since then, its contribution to official reserves has risen continually as banks seek to diversify their reserves, and trade in the eurozone continues to expand. Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in September 2007 that the euro could replace the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency.
Language and the euro European currency. Of other national Slavic languages using the Cyrillic alphabet, Macedonian, Russian and Serbian also use the spelling евро. Ukrainian uses євро and Belarusian uses еўра/эўра. In Catalan the official plural is the same as its regular plural "euros". The standard pronunciation of "euro" is . For the cent, the word "cèntim" (, plural "cèntims") is used, since historically this term has been used as the hundredth part of a currency unit. The fraction of the peseta was also called "cèntim", but it was withdrawn from circulation decades ago. In the Cornish language, euro is written "ewro" (like "Ewrop"