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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 9032013" data-attributes="member: 5142">Agreed. The rest of the world gets along with it swimmingly. This may be your personal hang-up.Much as [USER=177]@Umbran[/USER] said earlier, it's really about what system of measurement that you are accustomed to thinking in more than anything else. I've seen many non-Americans come to the United States and get massively tripped up by our imperial units. They find talking about distance or their height in terms of feet and inches (5' 11") to be strange when compared to describing height in terms of meters and centimeters or even just centimeters: e.g., 1.82 meters or 182 centimeters. Noting feet (') and inches (") confuses a lot of people out there, and there are even many Americans and Brits who still get confused about notating them.* Sometimes non-Americans ask me what we Americans do when it comes to measurements that are smaller than an inch. I guess we do fractions of an inch, but sometimes a millimeter is an easier way to express a distance finer than an inch. * See Stonehedge, where the demons dwell and the banshees wail.When non-Americans talk about the metric system there is not necessarily any arrogance about it. It's just the system of measurement that they are used to. And honestly - and I say this as an American in Europe - once you get accustomed to it, thinking or talking in metric is no more awkward or intuitive than imperial units. It's really about what you are used to.However, I will admit that I think many of us are so far removed from the basis of these imperial units that's almost silly to think about. Let's take miles. What everyday use does that come from? An English mile is based on eight furlongs. What the frell is a furlong? Almost no one uses furlongs today. People struggle enough telling you how many feet are in a mile. Asking them about furlongs is even more challenging. But a furlong was apparently the distance that a team of oxen could pull a plough without resting back in Anglo-Saxon days. Is that really the sort of common, lived experiences that people nowadays really have any grasp of when it comes to distance? How far I can go with my ox plough without a rest times eight? This is not to mention other now obscure imperial distances including rods and chains. And this naturally also impacts our sense of speed, which amounts to "I can drive 65 eight-oxen-ploughed-rests per hour on the interstate."Wu-Tang Clan:Busta Rhymes:The Mountain Goats:Just promise me that you won't look up how many songs are out there singing about "9 millimeters." <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="😜" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61c.png" title="Winking face with tongue    :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:" data-shortname=":stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />But yeah, it's clearly not happening. Apart from all the songs and poems outside of the United States that incorporate metric units in their songs and poems...</blockquote>

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