The Plural of Zloty?

złoty is not plural (the plural forms are złote and złotych depending on the figure) złoty is an adjective (it means golden in pl)

pierogi is plural for pieróg but this is a noun

as a monetary unit "złoty" functions as a noun.

Osiol's got it right.

as for złotówka it refers to individual coins rather than to expressing an amount of money.

You're right... I think it is called "rzeczownik odprzymiotnikowy" (?adjectival noun?)
I only wanted to indicate that złoty is not a regular noun (the "y" doesn't mean that złoty is plural)

Indeed, I have never heard of anyone talking about jeden złot. But should I have, by some curious twist of grammar?

Good call, but if writing an article in English, best to keep with PLN. If you really want to use "zloty" than keep it at "zloty"

Aaah, but the context was referring to "Zloties" in general, rather than a specific sum, if that makes sense.

I asked a bunch of fluent English speaking Poles their opinion on this, and...

Two said 'zloties' - however, one says zloty in ordinary speech
One said 'zloties, but now I say it, it sounds wrong' - and agreed that zloty sounds much better
One definitively said 'Zloty, there's no plural in English'

So there's no hard and fast rule - I use one zloty, many zloty personally...but.

I'm not Polish, but I've lived here a long time, speak Polish pretty well and I've always said and written zloties and have every intention of not changing.

Informally (from other English speakers living in Poland over the years) I've also heard zlots, zees and .... zits.

Złotys lol

Eh? Why lol? Looking at all the answers, it's not so obvious.

It's funny to see this thread still running, as the article that I was writing got published ages ago, and I really can't remember what I wrote LOL!

As I understand it there are some Polish nouns that are declined as if they were adjectives and złoty (a masculine noun for the English word zloty) is one of these. The same Polish word złoty (but as an adjective meaning gold/golden) is declined just the same but needs to agree with whatever noun it is describing.

"Quantities" in Polish require the genitive form. Thus kilka (a few), ile (how many) and so all would expect the genitive plural, namely złotych, to be used. The Polish "oddity" with numerical quantities is that 5 through 0 treat what they are describing as quantities and thus also require the genitive but 1 requires the nominative singular (jeden złoty) and 2 through 4 require the nominative plural (dwa/trzy/cztery złote).

When writing in English a good general rule is to either stay with the English way of writing the plurals but if using a foreign plural to always use it correctly as it would be in the foreign language. Thus in English text both 5 zloties and 5 złotych would be correct and inoffensive.

Quite a good example of where things can go wrong is with the word virus. The English plural of virus is quite simply viruses. Virus is of Latin origin and (unusually maybe for what I think is from the Latin fourth declension) has no plural form. There are those that think they know better and write viri (which translated from Latin means men) or worse still virii (which is untranslatable) for some sort of effect or to make it look how clever they are. No-one would say busi or busii when referring to a number of buses coming down the road!

I'm not convinced that 5 zloties is correct - it sounds like baby talk and doesn't sound natural at all in English. The plural of Euro is Euro - and should be likewise with Zloty.

I spotted a shop sign in Hammtramck, Michigan, It read "SKOP, Zlota i Srebra" which I think roughly translates to "money for silver."

It translates to; we buy gold and silver.
In this case it’s not Polish currency Złoty you deal with but gold as a precious metal.
BTW it's Skup not Skóp, spelling mistake as well.

It means Gold and Silver.

I sort of agree or at least I don't know what is absolutely correct because when or whether to use the plural of a word when referring to "collective nouns" in the English language is a matter of endless debate. Ten deer/duck/pound/penny/dollar/zloty/euro/cent versus ten deers/ducks/pounds/pennies/dollars/zloties/euros/cents can all be used correctly (though there are those that will disagree with this) when used in different contexts in different countries.

It is true that euro is the correct plural as dictated by the EU for use in legislative documents but every country also uses terms colloquially and these need not remain static or be the same. In Ireland, since joining the euro-zone, I can pretty much affirm that it would sound odd to hear someone say I want to change my euro into zloty and that I want to change my euros into zloties would be "much easier on my ear" even if others disagree with the grammatical or legislative correctness.

It is very easy to get bogged down with the semantics of grammar and though I find such debates interesting and fun I would be the last to say there is only one way of saying or writing things. In my opinion one of the beauties of the English language is that it has always continued to evolve and that this is likely to continue.