3 ms·

I'm always surprised that en_CA and fr_CA are so different. We use spaces as separator and comma for the decimal. Also we use the 24h format while the ROC uses

I'm always surprised that en_CA and fr_CA are so different. We use spaces as separator and comma for the decimal. Also we use the 24h format while the ROC uses 12h. We do use 12h colloquially though. Dates are officially y-M-d but most people use d/M/y. It's funny how in Canada we have some specific remnants of the imperial system. Most people under 50 have no idea what a Fahrenheit is (myself included), except for pool water and oven temperature. Go figure.

microcolonel 9y ago
Dates are a complete mess, yeah. I've seen absolutely every single convention used in Canadian government and business documents. I personally use ISO 8601 wherever it's an option (contracts, personal documents, casual communications) because of how ridiculous all of the other options are.
- jacobush 9y ago
  Agree about 8601 except that not ALL other options are silly. Writing the day with words is kind of nice in some writing, like "September 1 (Monday), 2017" is not too bad.
microcolonel 9y ago
The funny thing about the imperial remnants is that for almost all general tasks, Canadians still use pounds for weight (groceries, body mass, vehicle weight), but we don't use ounces. We use feet and inches to measure people, but metres for almost everything else, except nautical speed. Litres for gas in cars, sometimes gallons or pounds instead of litres for gas on boats. Pints for blood and beer, ounces for hard liquor, litres for all other service and retail fluids. People complain about inconsistency and lack of standards in the use of measurements in the U.S, but it is actually much more consistent there. It turns out that decimal units aren't really better for any practical purpose in a typical person's life, and it's certainly worse if you need to know both! Even in the U.S. of course, engineers, mechanics, plumbers and others still have to deal with a mix. Think metric-based and imperial-based bolts, metric v. imperial lumber sizing.
- semi-extrinsic 9y ago
  > Even in the U.S. of course, for engineers, mechanics, and some others they still have to deal with a mix. s/U.S./the entire world/ It's very common to have international U.S. based companies offer N types of fasteners/whatever in imperial sizes, but only N/2 in metric. So we frequently build stuff in imperial sizes because of greater flexibility. And don't get me started on (non)tapered pipe threads... I've heard some horror stories of huge subassemblies built in Europe using BSPT and shipped to the U.S. for final assembly, where of course everything else is NPT, so some poor sod has to spend a month replacing all subassembly fittings.

microcolonel 9y ago

Dates are a complete mess, yeah. I've seen absolutely every single convention used in Canadian government and business documents. I personally use ISO 8601 wherever it's an option (contracts, personal documents, casual communications) because of how ridiculous all of the other options are.

jacobush 9y ago
Agree about 8601 except that not ALL other options are silly. Writing the day with words is kind of nice in some writing, like "September 1 (Monday), 2017" is not too bad.

microcolonel 9y ago

The funny thing about the imperial remnants is that for almost all general tasks, Canadians still use pounds for weight (groceries, body mass, vehicle weight), but we don't use ounces. We use feet and inches to measure people, but metres for almost everything else, except nautical speed. Litres for gas in cars, sometimes gallons or pounds instead of litres for gas on boats. Pints for blood and beer, ounces for hard liquor, litres for all other service and retail fluids. People complain about inconsistency and lack of standards in the use of measurements in the U.S, but it is actually much more consistent there. It turns out that decimal units aren't really better for any practical purpose in a typical person's life, and it's certainly worse if you need to know both! Even in the U.S. of course, engineers, mechanics, plumbers and others still have to deal with a mix. Think metric-based and imperial-based bolts, metric v. imperial lumber sizing.

semi-extrinsic 9y ago
> Even in the U.S. of course, for engineers, mechanics, and some others they still have to deal with a mix. s/U.S./the entire world/ It's very common to have international U.S. based companies offer N types of fasteners/whatever in imperial sizes, but only N/2 in metric. So we frequently build stuff in imperial sizes because of greater flexibility. And don't get me started on (non)tapered pipe threads... I've heard some horror stories of huge subassemblies built in Europe using BSPT and shipped to the U.S. for final assembly, where of course everything else is NPT, so some poor sod has to spend a month replacing all subassembly fittings.