Yen pronunciation

Whenever I hear someone on TV or whatnot say "Yen" they say it as Yen. But I have a phrase book that says it is properly pronounced as "en"

Is this true?

N,

Do you mean on TV in Japan? I've only heard Japanese speakers say "en" in Japanese.

No, on American/Canadian TV.

In Japan, they pronounce it as en. Everywhere else that has English as their main languages will pronounce it as yen.

If you have looked at a kana table, you will have noticed that there is no 'ye' in katakana and hiragana. I know that it existed before (you still see Ebisu beer written as Yebisu) but that it got merged with the 'e' as it was pronounced the same.

My hunch is that the kanji for Yen was originally classified under the 'ye' but always pronounced as 'en'. So very likely the old romanization methods still made a difference between 'ye' and 'e' and although the romaji 'ye' was intended to be pronounced as an 'e', people less introduced to romaji started to pronounce it like it was written, and this "mistake" sort of became the standard. How is that for a house of cards? ^_^;;