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Owell's complaint that it's hard to estimate sizes in cm is debatable. As a tourist in Europe, I had plenty of people quote cm for various things that I would

Owell's complaint that it's hard to estimate sizes in cm is debatable. As a tourist in Europe, I had plenty of people quote cm for various things that I would measure in feet and inches. It didn't seem hard for them. His argument around literary value is interesting. There are many languages which may be superior in those respects. English excels at being precise and scientific.

mc32 11y ago
Of course. We can all get used to whatever measures one has to use in daily life. Still, I think because many of the imperial units did actually come from human physical bases, they are intrinsically humanistic, whereas the metric system simply took arbitrary measures and divided and multiplied in powers of ten --leaving very large gaps. Kind of the same thing in architecture, when they talk about human scale vs more modernist epic architecture which lacks human scale (Brasilia, for example)
- NetStrikeForce 11y ago
  There are no gaps between metric measures, especially not "very large" ones. It happens that people used to the metric system take full advantage of it by using decimals, whereas people raised using the imperial system don't. In the metric system you have much bigger units than with imperial, much smaller too and all the needed ones in between. A good example is height. It is much more precise and easy to use the metric system to say I'm 1'87 meters than saying 5 feet 11 inches, which mixes units. If you want to be more precise you could say 1'871 in metric and 5 feet 11 inches and something like "a sixteenth of an inch" (sorry I'm not being accurate, I didn't even look up). Or human weight? Don't get me started with stone and pounds. A stone is something more than 6kg and a pound is about 400g or 0'4kg. Good luck with that. The imperial system might have an aura of romanticism for those of you raised on countries that still use it, but the metric system is one of the most elegant solutions civilisation has invented. It works in every case better than any other system and it is easy to teach to kids. 10/10 would measure again ;) I guess, after all there's a reason the international science community adopted the metric system.
  - Exicato 11y ago
    > I guess, after all there's a reason the international science community adopted the metric system. There are a few big exceptions - physics with eV, astronomy with just about a whole new imperial system, warts and all, and the most brazen is chemists who've managed to squeeze the mole in to the SI system despite its being entirely redundant and depending on two (2!) different mass units - the kg and the amu. So I'd say some big subgroups of the science community really haven't adopted the metric system.
  - tdsamardzhiev 11y ago
    1.87m is around 6ft2, actually :) I see that imperial units are still used because for many people it is too late to change (or they are just too stubborn). Teaching imperial units to kids, though, should be considered a crime.
    - dagw 11y ago
      Imperial units should be continued to be taught in English class as an interesting and archaic linguistic quirk that you need to be aware of as it will show up in a lot of older writings.
    - saiya-jin 11y ago
      > Teaching imperial units to kids, though, should be considered a crime. THIS. as for curiosity, why not, but we can say something similar about nordic runes or egyptian writings. But this is more of an ego challenge, when one should accept that what they grown up with is inferior (sorry to our english-native friends, but imperial system is really, really archaic & inferior). And yes, we in europe regularly measure in metres+centimetres, we use decimetres quite regularly, and it feels natural having bigger part divided into 10 or 100, or 1000 subparts. On the other hand, feets are nightmare (30,5cm), and 6"2 - what the heck is that 2? is it 2/10 of the foot? or 2 inches which are TOTALLY different measure compared to feet without any easy translation? mess...
      - michaelbuddy 11y ago
        Bah. first off you write it as 6'2" 6 ft, 2 inches. when you're doing practical applications of this, running around with your tape measure and cutting wood to fit, you dont' want to start mixing in percentages. It gets more comfortable the more you use a tape measure because you're not using tenths. You're using quarters, eighths and 16ths. Need more precise? Haha, I don't want to say because it's vulgar but fits well on a job site. It may seem like an extra pain in the neck but I think it just has to do with a personal aesthetic scale, one that can grow on you quickly. I like to divide and multiply by 2 and 3 and 4, it keeps the numbers around me simple and. And doing that with inches, you have 12, 24, 48. Other things scale-wise to people ends up being kind of nice. Door widths at 30" Sheets of plywood and drywall at 4'x 8'. Heavy to handle but cover a lot of area. These template defaults just kind of become aesthetically pleasing to work with after I'd say a short time, one can appreciate the units of measurements and how we manufacture to suit them and ourselves best.
jon-wood 11y ago
What feels right is mostly determined by what you grew up with. I grew up with the metric system, and imperial is basically meaningless to me, and I know people the other way round.
atmosx 11y ago
> English excels at being precise and scientific. That's false. Today English is the biggest language in terms of dictionary weight. English is the universal language, borrows terminology from other languages and modern sciences, which grow exponentially, use primarily English. Especially computer science. That said, English tends to be less precise and hence less complex compared to other languages. For example 'love' vs 'in love' are used interchangeably and their meaning is not as precise as in other languages. Greek has totally different words to convey the meaning 'ΑΓΑΠΗ' (love) vs 'ΕΡΩΤΑΣ' (in love). Italian like English uses 'innamorato' vs 'amore', which again blurs the difference between the two. Greek and Russian I believe are way more precise as languages than English will ever be. That's not to that a language is superior or inferior than the other. It's a matter of language design, I guess. I don't know about Japanese, Chinese, African and Arabic languages/dialects. Bulgarian for example is a rather modern language, derives from Cyrillic and is grammatically very simple. Much simpler than Russian. But it's a complete language by all means.
- abandonliberty 11y ago
  Crap, I'm not a linguist. I was just trying to find some redeeming feature of the language ;) Now, since I assume we both support metric, we have to partner to change the default language of the world.

mc32 11y ago

Of course. We can all get used to whatever measures one has to use in daily life. Still, I think because many of the imperial units did actually come from human physical bases, they are intrinsically humanistic, whereas the metric system simply took arbitrary measures and divided and multiplied in powers of ten --leaving very large gaps. Kind of the same thing in architecture, when they talk about human scale vs more modernist epic architecture which lacks human scale (Brasilia, for example)

NetStrikeForce 11y ago
There are no gaps between metric measures, especially not "very large" ones. It happens that people used to the metric system take full advantage of it by using decimals, whereas people raised using the imperial system don't. In the metric system you have much bigger units than with imperial, much smaller too and all the needed ones in between. A good example is height. It is much more precise and easy to use the metric system to say I'm 1'87 meters than saying 5 feet 11 inches, which mixes units. If you want to be more precise you could say 1'871 in metric and 5 feet 11 inches and something like "a sixteenth of an inch" (sorry I'm not being accurate, I didn't even look up). Or human weight? Don't get me started with stone and pounds. A stone is something more than 6kg and a pound is about 400g or 0'4kg. Good luck with that. The imperial system might have an aura of romanticism for those of you raised on countries that still use it, but the metric system is one of the most elegant solutions civilisation has invented. It works in every case better than any other system and it is easy to teach to kids. 10/10 would measure again ;) I guess, after all there's a reason the international science community adopted the metric system.
- Exicato 11y ago
  > I guess, after all there's a reason the international science community adopted the metric system. There are a few big exceptions - physics with eV, astronomy with just about a whole new imperial system, warts and all, and the most brazen is chemists who've managed to squeeze the mole in to the SI system despite its being entirely redundant and depending on two (2!) different mass units - the kg and the amu. So I'd say some big subgroups of the science community really haven't adopted the metric system.
- tdsamardzhiev 11y ago
  1.87m is around 6ft2, actually :) I see that imperial units are still used because for many people it is too late to change (or they are just too stubborn). Teaching imperial units to kids, though, should be considered a crime.
  - dagw 11y ago
    Imperial units should be continued to be taught in English class as an interesting and archaic linguistic quirk that you need to be aware of as it will show up in a lot of older writings.
  - saiya-jin 11y ago
    > Teaching imperial units to kids, though, should be considered a crime. THIS. as for curiosity, why not, but we can say something similar about nordic runes or egyptian writings. But this is more of an ego challenge, when one should accept that what they grown up with is inferior (sorry to our english-native friends, but imperial system is really, really archaic & inferior). And yes, we in europe regularly measure in metres+centimetres, we use decimetres quite regularly, and it feels natural having bigger part divided into 10 or 100, or 1000 subparts. On the other hand, feets are nightmare (30,5cm), and 6"2 - what the heck is that 2? is it 2/10 of the foot? or 2 inches which are TOTALLY different measure compared to feet without any easy translation? mess...
    - michaelbuddy 11y ago
      Bah. first off you write it as 6'2" 6 ft, 2 inches. when you're doing practical applications of this, running around with your tape measure and cutting wood to fit, you dont' want to start mixing in percentages. It gets more comfortable the more you use a tape measure because you're not using tenths. You're using quarters, eighths and 16ths. Need more precise? Haha, I don't want to say because it's vulgar but fits well on a job site. It may seem like an extra pain in the neck but I think it just has to do with a personal aesthetic scale, one that can grow on you quickly. I like to divide and multiply by 2 and 3 and 4, it keeps the numbers around me simple and. And doing that with inches, you have 12, 24, 48. Other things scale-wise to people ends up being kind of nice. Door widths at 30" Sheets of plywood and drywall at 4'x 8'. Heavy to handle but cover a lot of area. These template defaults just kind of become aesthetically pleasing to work with after I'd say a short time, one can appreciate the units of measurements and how we manufacture to suit them and ourselves best.

jon-wood 11y ago

What feels right is mostly determined by what you grew up with. I grew up with the metric system, and imperial is basically meaningless to me, and I know people the other way round.

atmosx 11y ago

> English excels at being precise and scientific. That's false. Today English is the biggest language in terms of dictionary weight. English is the universal language, borrows terminology from other languages and modern sciences, which grow exponentially, use primarily English. Especially computer science. That said, English tends to be less precise and hence less complex compared to other languages. For example 'love' vs 'in love' are used interchangeably and their meaning is not as precise as in other languages. Greek has totally different words to convey the meaning 'ΑΓΑΠΗ' (love) vs 'ΕΡΩΤΑΣ' (in love). Italian like English uses 'innamorato' vs 'amore', which again blurs the difference between the two. Greek and Russian I believe are way more precise as languages than English will ever be. That's not to that a language is superior or inferior than the other. It's a matter of language design, I guess. I don't know about Japanese, Chinese, African and Arabic languages/dialects. Bulgarian for example is a rather modern language, derives from Cyrillic and is grammatically very simple. Much simpler than Russian. But it's a complete language by all means.

abandonliberty 11y ago
Crap, I'm not a linguist. I was just trying to find some redeeming feature of the language ;) Now, since I assume we both support metric, we have to partner to change the default language of the world.