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Why the heck does America still use outdated measurement and date units?
- Thread starter garirry
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A somewhat ironic exception, don't you think?!Probably the one exception.Otherwise it is April 7th.
I would say 7th of April as most British people do. The day always comes before the month when speaking here. I would write it like this too: 07/04.
Isn't it interesting to know how "we" Americans are not tied by such technicalities. If one thinks about it, it is very nice for governments not to restrict the people from speaking and writing they way they choose. In the case of, "4th of July," it is a lot easier and faster to realize what it represents than saying, "4 July," or even "July 4th". Don't you think so? How about, "May Day"? What does this day represents to you, "1 May." or "May 1"?
See...a lot of you are thinking of "others and their shortcomings." It is only natural for one to see oneself as being correct, but not others.
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To me saying, "Seventh of April" is a waste of time unless it is formal speech. However, some Americans would respond the American or British way by saying, "7th April," or just "7 April," or even "April 7th." What difference should the head or the tail make as long as the other person understand what it is? If I visit the UK I could say it in the UK way, but in the US I say it whichever way I feel like as long as the other person understands.
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Indeed. A bit like saying “ I could careless “ instead of “ I couldn’t careless”. Anything that’s shorter and to the point huh.
Well, somewhat it is, although "care less" would be more formal. The most meaningful is what it represents to you (the meaning of it) at the moment. It is the same with languages. You aren't speaking "Old English" anymore. Are you?Indeed. A bit like saying “ I could careless “ instead of “ I couldn’t careless”. Anything that’s shorter and to the point huh.
I was born under the metric system, but once I lived in the US I adapted to the American way (language, measuring system, and culture). The difference is that in the US we use more than one measuring system. If I visit the UK, I may have to "change my ways and adjust to yours." The bottomline is this: I should not have to force you to change "your ways" to "my ways". If I visit some of my former friends in the NYC ghetto, it would be disrespectful not to address them in the way they address me.
The simplest way to understand what I have been trying to tell you is as follows is at the family level at home: trying to force the spouse and children to follow your ways versus understanding that each one of them is an individual. Now, in a family of Borg, then all alike would follow the rules of the collective
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Dunno what ya’ll on about.
Does any government deem that either 4 July, July 4th, or 4th of July is correct Spoken English?
It is that it is spoken in different ways, but in American English it is spoken differently from how Americans usually enunciate dates…… and that is the form that most non American speakers use, the form used by the colonial power America wanted to be independent of.
It is the unique numerical form of writing the date used in the USA that the rest of the English speaking world finds weird, and sometimes confusing, but do what you like in the name of American exceptionalism.
Likewise with the system of customary American weights and measures, using Imperial system names, yet some are a different quantity compared with the actual Imperial unit (the US gallon, for instance). And then there is that those American weights and measures are officially defined in metric quantities. Thus the metric system defines the American system…….
Thus the USA is a metric country, and uses the metric system in the military and science, but has not bought it into every day use, while other countries have. Maybe Dubious Donald wanted the US out of NATO because he could not understand the measurements used by the partners in the organisation.
Come to think of it, perhaps it is time for the UK to demand royalties of the US for the use of the English language, along with a penalty for bastardising spellings and pronounciation.
As to May Day..... the 1st day of May, which means nothing in the land of my birth; we have Labour Day on the last Monday of October. And in the country where I worked for a decade and a half, it was recognised as Labour Day, thus a day off for many private sector workers. Not so for the government institution where I worked.
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Some excellent points mentioned.
I was hoping you were going to mention Merriam Webster and Noah as well at some point during your post, but perhaps it would have got a little too intense for the likes of some on here 😁
Maybe I misunderstood what you wrote in one of your responses, because I agree nearly 100% with what you have written above. More than likely I mistook you for another poster, one that I assumed was European, thus my mentioning of "May Day."
Please accept my most sincere apology.
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Just my thoughts, but if you are talking about the date of July 4th, it will be called July 4th. As in "we can get you an appointment on July 4th".
But when that same day is being used to describe Independence Day, it is the 4th of July. I think that is mostly because as the date approaches, the conversation will be "What are you doing on the 4th" and July is understood.
I can' think of any other date when the day precedes the month in conversation.
The guy on the right looks confused throughout the whole video Look at that face🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Chuck Nice is deGrass Tyson's comedic sidekick. His job is to make embarrassing comments that sometimes stop deGrass Tyson dead in his tracks, and to ask leading questions. However, from some of comments and questions it is clear that Nice is not only very intelligent, but extremely knowledgeable about science. Don't knock him.
I'd never knock anyone for putting a smile on my face.
Here in the U.K. we have a half-hearted attempt at metrication. One is only allowed to use multiples and subdivisions by thousands: 5cm must be expressed as 50mm for example. As our American chums might say 'go figure!'.
No - I don't consider that a half-hearted attempt. The reason for steps at a thousand-fold is simple - to avoid misinterpretation and mistakes. (And there are relatively few products in the UK that are designed, manufactured and sold in non-metric units. Quite often, when they are sold in Imperial units, a close examination reveals they were designed and manufactured in metric.)
I spend much time dealing with things in the world of medicine (though I am in no way a medic of any sort).
The main medicine I deal with is, usually, discussed in terms of micrograms - at least, within the UK. That means we deal with numbers from about 12 to 300. Nice and simple. This almost entirely avoids decimals. (The exception is where half a 25 dose which could be designated 12.5 - but some systems use 12 or 13 to avoid that.)
But people sometimes use milligrams - whether intentionally or inadvertently. Which makes doses that are typically 0.012 to 0.3 milligrams. That often causes confusion but is at least fairly easy to explain. Used in some countries, but I can't think of a place that always uses milligrams and never micrograms.
The other day I found one country which expresses these same doses in grams. 0.000012 to 0.0003.
That little lot is already capable of causing problems.
Just think, if we added in the in-between units - 10^^-5, 10^^-4, 10^^-2, 10^^-1. We really don't have good names for them, and using powers causes even more confusion. (I really don't think using decigram and centigram would be of any benefit here. Going the other way, deca- and hecto- are pretty rare.)
By changing unit at multiples of a thousand, there are relatively few places where mistakes will be hidden.
And, if you go to the timber yard, metrication has another benefit. True metric sizes are the finished dimension. Whereas Imperial measurements were pre-finished dimensions. But the amount by which a piece of finished timber is smaller than the nominal pre-finished size varied from one yard to another, from one product to another.
Not suggesting it was impossible to resolve this without metrication. But it gave an impetus, a relatively level playing field for all players, and compatibility with USA, Canadian, and other timber standards.
Finally, you can use whatever units you like. But don't expect others to follow your system.
(It also doesn't really help that Imperial units have all sorts of inconsistencies with USA customary units.)
One of the few products that should remain Imperial are mint sweets.
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Nearly 100 years ago John Bradfield decided that all measurements involved in building the Sydney Harbour Bridge would be in millimetres, to eliminate the problems that polyphenol is talking about.
And anyway, a 1,000 millilitre motorbike engine sounds heaps better than a dinky little 1 litre one...
I come from a time when people were going on about the litre not being an SI unit. And that we should use the cubic decimetre (dm3). A horrible unit in that it uses the deci- prefix, but one that naturally comes into being due to volume having (obviously) three dimensions!
Wiki says, which is as I understand the current state, "Non-SI unit accepted for use with SI".
In my experience, people started using litres for engine capacities at the two-litre level. Lower capacities being typically identified by just the number - six-fifty, cinquecento, etc. - or using hundreds - nine hundred, fourteen hundred, etc. I think both bigging up the sound and that two thousand one hundred is a mouthful, as is twenty-one hundred, are part of the reason.
Now the Sydney Harbor itself is used as a unit of measurement...
This is true. One Sydney Harbour is defined as a sydharb and is equivalent to 500 gigalitres.
Not only the Sydney Harbour, but swimming pools as well.
The Harbour is so 200,000 swimming pools in capacity, and dams are measured by how many Sydney Harbours they can contain (although before the drought broke, many dams were down to about 1/2 a swimming pool...).
I just did a panel molding project in my house. Watching a how-to YouTube video I stumbled across a guy using metric for his measurements and it seemed so easy. I bought a metric tape measure off Amazon and did 90% of the project in metric. I loved it. Sure I still used a calculator for some things, but not a construction calculator.