3 ms·

I can see where the writer of that article is coming from, having been born in 1950, Canada would've started its "metrification" in his/her 20s. Arguably a very

by Phemist 11y ago

I can see where the writer of that article is coming from, having been born in 1950, Canada would've started its "metrification" in his/her 20s. Arguably a very late time to switch your mode of thought from imperial to metric. However, the key point Orwell makes: "But I have never heard a Frenchman say, ‘He is a hundred and forty-two centimetres high’" is, quite simply, false. To my Dutch ears, hearing about a 1.42m high man does bring up a vivid image of a very short person who'd have problems grabbing anything from a kitchen counter. Thus, it seems more like a legacy problem, rather than the imperial system being intrinsically more relatable than the metric system. A better test would be to see how long it would take someone who is unfamiliar with either systems, to pick up either. Does it take kids longer to learn metric than imperial? I doubt that..

jmnicolas 11y ago
I'm French but I can make the conversions of feet, pounds etc in my head quite easily (divide by 3 and 2 respectively to get a good enough approximation). But I'm at loss with Fahrenheit though.
- Phemist 11y ago
  The point is not really about the difficulty of conversion, but about having to do it at all. Whether hearing about a 1.42m high man brings up a vivid image immediately, or only after conversion to imperial measures. Not unlike how becoming fluent in a given second language means there are no longer any intermediates. Rather than having to think consciously of a certain sentence in your own native language and then converting that consciously to a sentence in the given second language, you can just immediately think of the sentence in the given second language. This happens gradually of course, there are a few length measurements in feet & inches that immediately give me a clear/rich image of the intended length: 6 feet, my own height in feet/inches, etc. However, the set of imperial length measures for which this happens is much, much smaller than that for metric length measures. For instance, I have absolutely no clue how long a yard is, let alone a hundred yards, and how that relates to a mile. Only after conversion, and doing the conversion enough times, will it become clear(er) to me.

by Phemist 11y ago

jmnicolas 11y ago

I'm French but I can make the conversions of feet, pounds etc in my head quite easily (divide by 3 and 2 respectively to get a good enough approximation). But I'm at loss with Fahrenheit though.

Phemist 11y ago
The point is not really about the difficulty of conversion, but about having to do it at all. Whether hearing about a 1.42m high man brings up a vivid image immediately, or only after conversion to imperial measures. Not unlike how becoming fluent in a given second language means there are no longer any intermediates. Rather than having to think consciously of a certain sentence in your own native language and then converting that consciously to a sentence in the given second language, you can just immediately think of the sentence in the given second language. This happens gradually of course, there are a few length measurements in feet & inches that immediately give me a clear/rich image of the intended length: 6 feet, my own height in feet/inches, etc. However, the set of imperial length measures for which this happens is much, much smaller than that for metric length measures. For instance, I have absolutely no clue how long a yard is, let alone a hundred yards, and how that relates to a mile. Only after conversion, and doing the conversion enough times, will it become clear(er) to me.