if you're moving to the UK or visiting
the UK
the most difficult thing you'll have to
learn may not be
the English language but our insane
system of weighing and measuring.
Britain has officially been a metric
country since we joined the EEC in 1973
but our attempts to implement
metrication
have been muddled,
some would say half-hearted or even
half-baked. If you're British it feels
normal you grew up with it but to an
outsider
it's madness. During the
covert crisis the British government
announced that people should keep
two meters apart for social distancing
where it is possible
to keep two meters apart people should
but where it is not we will advise
people
to keep a social distance of one meter
plus
meaning they should remain one meter apart.
something that was understandably
overlooked in the midst of a
global pandemic was that the
announcement was made,
by Boris Johnson and the government with
metric measurements. In the US the
recommended distance was
six feet or 13 feet the equivalent to
one or two
meters. The US is still clearly using the
imperial
system - i'm going to call it the imperial
system there are different names for it
but i'm using imperial in this video. Now
are we using the metric system
in Britain well not entirely do we use
the imperial
system well it's complicated bloody
complicated more complicated than the
the rules of cricket. I'm an English
teacher
and sometimes i get a student who wants
to say something in English
using metric measurements
and they say that they weigh
76 kilos and so how do you say that in
English [measurements]
and they want a quick answer and i don't
quite know what to say I don't want to
take them down that
rabbit hole of British measurements
weirdness. If you grew up in the UK, as i
said, it's normal but to an outsider
this arcane system is daunting to say
the least
but today we are descending that rabbit
hole
because i'm going to explain it all so
let's jump in
listen to our podcast zeitgeist banana
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Hello and welcome to LetThemTalkTV.
The world is divided up into those
countries using the metric system
and three countries not using the metric
system
and those are Liberia, Burma
and the US and even Liberia has recently
moved to introduce
the metric system. The metric system was
introduced by the french
after the revolution in 1789
and it has since spread throughout the
world.
The other system with feet, inches, pints
etc i'll refer to as the imperial
system. There are two countries to my
knowledge that
straddle the two systems and those are
Canada and the UK i'm not an expert
on the Canadian system so i won't talk
about that but i do welcome any
comments from Canadians also even if
you're in a non-metric country
you can't entirely avoid the metric
system.
If you're sending rockets into space
you're going to use metric system as
it's an
international thing and it's easier if
you work for
NASA then let us know in the comments.
in science in maths in engineering
in research they are going to use the
metric system.
you should also note that among metric
countries some might still use to some
degree
the imperial system or another system
for a few things. i was in Guatemala for
a few years ago
and i was surprised to find that in the
market
they were weighing things in ounces and
pounds.
japan is a metric country but
they measure the surface area of a room
in tatami mats because tatami mats have
a standard size and that's what they use
on their floors. in most countries you
buy eggs by the dozen
or half dozen not a metric 10
TVs or computer screens are often sold
in inches
even in metric countries and jeans too
are usually sold
with waste measurements in inches and of
course,
measurements of time use a 12 based
system not a
decimal system and nobody seems to have
a problem
with that. Although it's not always been
like that because the Romans originally
had a 10-month
calendar and we are still reminded of
this with the names of our months
September,
October, November, December which mean
the 7th 8th
9th and 10th months respectively
then the romans added January and
February so now
these names are kind of out of sync.
October should be called December
the 10th month because that's what it is
and
2 000 years later we still haven't
updated the names.
After the french revolution the French
briefly introduced
decimal time with 10 hours in a day
and 100 minutes in each hour but it
never
caught on. What about the UK well let's
start where the UK
has gone fully metric, money and [temperature]
Britain's currency decimalized in 1971.
it's hard to believe but before that the
money was so
mystifying. Here we have a mug
from 1970 whose aim is to help
the confused populace to understand
the new currency on this side we have
the old pounds and pence and here the
equivalent
in the decimal currency.
One pound, Britain's beloved pound,
was divided up into pennies how many
pennies? how many pennies in a pound?
240. Originally one pound was a lot of
money in anglo-saxon times 240
pennies was equivalent to one pound of
weight
in silver. So here we have one penny
three pennies or throughputs strange to
think that you have a unit of currency
of
three
this coin the florin was the beginning
of decimalization in Britain
it was introduced in 1849 it was a tenth
of
one pound, radical at the time and
sometimes you didn't talk about pounds
you talked about guineas the guinea
was one pound and one shilling. I never
really
understood that one. Now crazy it seems
there was some logic to the old system
the imperial system is usually, I stress
usually,
divisible by 12 rather than 10
and it's easier to divide things by 12
than 10. One pound 240
pence you can split that in more ways
than one pound with 100 pence
so yeah it's convenient if you and your
indeterminate number of
business partners have just spent the
evening selling
jelly deals in pubs around the east end
of london
and then you come back to your lair
and you can divide a pound
of 240 pennies many
different ways whereas a pound with 100
pence
has fewer. options. Here you are
240 is divisible by 1 2 3
4 5 6 8 10 12 15
16 20 24 30 40 48
60 80 and 120
whereas 100 is divisible
merely by 1 2 4 5 10 20 25
and 50. Try dividing a pound between
three
it's impossible but in the old system
you could
So if you're living in a mostly
illiterate society
and you just divide small quantities up
amongst
family and friends then the imperial
system
makes some sense. However,
in the industrial age where you're
an engineer or you're building bridges
or you're
calculating water pressure for your
hydraulic
pump it makes no sense at all. Let's move
on to
temperature until the 1980s Britain used
fahrenheit then they started
giving both fahrenheit and centigrade on
the weather forecast for a time they
showed the weather forecast in
centigrade
but with fahrenheit shown in smaller
letters below
for those who were confused by the new
system but i reckon now
everyone uses centigrade. I can't think
of the last time I heard someone
in Britain using fahrenheit for weather
or in any other context. That's the easy
part
now it starts to get difficult
Let me tell you that i was at school in
the 1970s yes that's right
and at that time I only
learned the metric system
because they
told me they said
"by the time you become an adult, Gideon
your imperial system in the UK will
have died out"
it's 2020 now and it's still alive. You
can imagine
that I personally get confused
because i learned the metric system at
school but going out into the
the real world they're often using
different measurements. Let's have a look
at that if you're driving
on british roads you'll notice that the
speed signs
are in miles per hour. Distances
are in miles. This is true in
conversation too
you'd say it's 200 miles
from Leeds to London and not 300
kilometers.
Most people would say that. However for
shorter distances
i think most people will use meters.
"Where's the bank?"
"It's about 50 meters
down the road"
rather than whatever 100 yards down the
road.
I think few people under the age of
93 use yards anymore I haven't done a
survey but if you do still use yards.
You're in the UK let us know in the
comments.
However on road signs you still see
yards, feet and inches. Look at this sign
i came across while walking through the
suburbs
of London recently do you know what it
means? well beware because in 325 yards
you're going to go under a bridge and if
your vehicle
is higher than 11 feet and zero inches
you're in trouble but how many British
people let alone foreigners
would understand that sign? I would
venture that this is an
accident waiting to happen. Oh yes, in
addition
to your 93-year-old grandmother
and outdated road signs there is one
organization
that uses miles and yards when giving
directions
and that is none other than the bastion
of
state of the art technology a high-tech
company
Google, yes that's right if you search,
for directions in the UK
you'll be told in imperial
measurements and really it's very
annoying
I want to switch over to metric i don't
know how
Google why are you doing this? Britain
went metric
in 1973 pull your finger out
and yet for very short distances this
gets really strange
very short distances a lot of people
will revert to the imperial system
for example I stood about two feet away
from the edge of the cliff.
snails are only a couple of inches
in length in length I don't talk about
snails don't know but i can't think of
another example.
'Could you move the lamp a couple of
inches ,six inches to the left?" So i think
generally people are more familiar with
meters maybe because of athletics and the
distances they use everyone knows
100 meters and 200 meters and 400 meters
but the olympic committee hasn't yet
introduced
a 10 centimeter race.
Yet some people will continue to
measure small distances with inches
because that's what they're more
familiar with.
For height we exclusively use feet and
inches.
How tall are you?
I'm 5'11.
If you use meters
people will think you're foreign or
weird
"How tall are you?"
one meter 78
what did he say?
it's okay he's foreign
If you're
buying or renting a house
they'll quote the surface area in square
feet
but if you're buying a carpet or
parquet to cover the surface area
that'll be measured
in a price per square meter.
Office space is measured in square feet
Clothes are measured in inches except
for shoes
which is kind of a dead heat. Your
friendly sales assistant
at the shoe shop will understand both
size
10 and 44. Just for your
information
English shoe sizes are based on barley
corns.
one size is one barley corn which is
equivalent to
a third of an inch there you are.
Dimensions
are measured in imperial measurements
screens are measured in inches
as they are many metric countries, as I
said before,
pizzas measured in inches when they need
to be measured
For weight in Britain we generally use
kilos except when we're talking about
people. Almost all the products you get
in the grocery store in the supermarkets
they're sold in metric measurements in
kilos
or in grams the exception could be
at the deli counter where people
sometimes ask for things in
in ounces or pounds but even this
is becoming rare. If you go to the
market, fruit and veg. is weighed in kilos
some greengrocers still insist on
displaying the price per pound
but according to the law the price per
kilo
should be more prominent than the price
per £
So this sign is actually illegal.
for people we use stone for example
"I'm 12 stone". Side note
the plural of STONE is STONE
twelve stone, three pounds. the plural of POUND
is POUNDS, you may have noticed. Some
young people will use kilos but this
is rare as with height if you use
kilos people will think you're you're
foreign
or weird but if you just use pounds
people will
think you're weird or American because
in the UK it's stone we use. The
exception
is if you get weighed or measured by a
doctor
then that would legitimize the use of
metric measurements in in kilos or
in meters. Here's a test for you. How tall
are you in feet and inches?
how much you weigh? that's your homework.
For liquids milk is sold in pints
but to all you refined millennials out
there
almond milk and all other plant-based
non-dairy alternatives are sold by the
litre.
Beer in pubs is sold in pints but beer
sold in the supermarket will be sold in
litres. Other liquids such as cooking oil
bottled water is sold in litres a pint
by the way is 564 millilitres,
slightly more than half a litre. You fill
up your car
with petrol and the price is quoted per
litre but of course when you
drive away the speedometer will tell you
the speed in miles per hour. Even though
British people
use the imperial system almost everybody
could tell you how many centimetres
there are in a metre or how many metres
in
a kilometre how many grams in a kilo.
However
most British people don't really
know the imperial
system. I did a non-scientific survey
among some of my
English friends and they didn't
know in many cases. what about you?
How many feet in a yard?
three. How many inches in a foot?
that's twelve how many yards in a mile?
1760. How
many pounds in a stone?
that would be  14. 
Don't know why answers on a postcard how
How many ounces
in a pint/pound?
16. why 16? I don't know. You can half 16
many different ways I guess it's
something to do with that. What's the
freezing point of water in fahrenheit?
32 degrees that's right
Generally I think most people agree that
the metric system is a lot easier the
only advantage i can think of is
that it's divided, usually divided, up by
12
and secondly imperial measurements are
better at expressing things figuratively.
Metric measurements are just too precise,
too scientific. The very fact the
imperial measurements are
imprecise gives it an advantage here for
example,
an inch can be used as a verb
and it can be used to mean a short
distance in general
okay for example "the two sides have
been negotiating
all day and I think they are inching
closer to a deal"
'they are centermetering
closer to a deal'?
No it doesn't work.
"you want to join the orchestra but at
the moment
you are miles away from the required
level". "You're kilometres away....?"
No it doesn't work from the top of the
hill
you can see for miles and miles.
'For kilometres and kilometres' well
I don't know maybe not really though
miles has
has poetry built within it but
kilometers just sounds
too scientific, too precise
Now i know we should change completely
to the metric system
but the problem is it is what it is
if you grew up with the old system then
you're
used to it. So it's not really a priority
people are worried about jobs and
education
and safety and health especially during
this
global pandemic but virtually no one is
going to vote for a candidate
because he's calling for full
metrication,
people just don't care that much so
i guess things are going to stay as they
are
even, though the truth is that
but for a few small advantages of the
old system,
i mentioned the metric system is miles
better. So what's the situation where you
are? Do you only use the metric system or
do you have another way of counting.
Let us know in the comments thanks for
watching.
See you soon, bye
