English vs English

[deanb]

Skipping/skipping rope = jump rope

[MasterDex]

What do folks call an airing cupboard in the US? I think airing cupboard is what most of the UK use but we call it a hot press here in Ireland.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Airing cupboard

 

An airing cupboard is a large built-in wardrobe, sometimes of walk-in dimensions, containing a water heater; either an immersion heater for hot running water or a boiler for central heating water. Shelves, usually slatted to allow for circulation of heat, are positioned above or around the heater to provide storage for clothing, typically linen and towelling. The purpose is to allow air to circulate around the stored fabrics to prevent damp forming. A shelf can also be used to fully remove traces of damp from dried clothing before it is put away in drawers and wardrobes. Other names include "boiler cupboard", or (in Ireland) "hot press".

 

I don't think I've ever come across such a thing. This is a new concept to me.

[Thursday Next]

I think that airing cupboards are dying out even in the UK. They principally rely on heat escaping from the hot water system which is, obviously, inefficient. As lagging improves and energy efficiency increases generally, the actual cupboards are nowhere near as warm as they would have been when this was common practice say 15years back.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I've never heard of that either. Closest thing I can think of would be a utility closet, but that's just the little closet-room with the hot water heater/furnace/air conditioner in it, and occasionally brooms/vacuums/etc.

[deanb]

So from what I've gathered on a reddit post, US doesn't exactly have the phrase "silver surfer". Well you do but it's:

 

and not

 

(cos of the hair on old folks being silver, and surfing the web)

[TheMightyEthan]

Nope, never heard that before outside the context of the super hero.

[Hot Heart]

This isn't really a 'versus' thing but I thought I'd share.

 

Rewatching The Wire I noticed the subtitles say 'whaling on' for people referring to someone having the crap beaten out of them, but I'd always imagined it was 'wail on'. Did some searching and I think I have found the origins of the term.

 

http://idioms.thefre...ary.com/whaling

whale the tar out of someone

Inf. to spank or beat someone. (See also beat the living daylights out of someone.)

 

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has actually heard that used before.

[TheMightyEthan]

I've heard "whale on" but I've also always assumed it was "wail".

[Yantelope V2]

I've heard "whale on" but I've also always assumed it was "wail".

 

Yes, I always thought it was wail as well.

[fuchikoma]

I thought it was wail - but I guess looking at it, that doesn't make sense - maybe if it meant beating someone until they wail?

[Yantelope V2]

Oh and my mother did use the full phrase "whale the tar out of you". Jokingly of course *twitch*

Edited February 1, 2012 by Yantelope V2

[TheMightyEthan]

I've heard "beat the tar out of you" but never "whale the tar".

[deanb]

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Simple European minds can't handle our more complex systems.

[CorgiShinobi]

I'll always prefer mm/dd/yyyy, but this is opinion. Defining what part of the month it is in the year versus what specific day it is by month and year.

 

While Fahrenheit seems goofy, it's also ingrained in society. You'd be hard-pressed to have people think "32 degress" is actually 90 degress Fahrenheit. At least Réaumur isn't around anymore (like Celsius, but 0 to 80).

[fuchikoma]

As a nerd who archives stuff on PC, I like YYYYMMDD because if filenames are sorted alphabetically it'll also sort chronologically, and it's easy and always possible to enter it as just numbers, no slash or hyphen.

 

I wish Turn10 would loosen up with their units. I took it for granted how in Gran Turismo you could set your units for eachmeasurement, but in Forza 3 you set it for all measurements. So I can see how powerful my car is or how fast it's going - only one. In Canada, cars haven't travelled in mph in ages and I have no idea how many kW a car has or how to relate to that. We use km/h and usually bhp. I think torque is usually still in ft/lbs, but I've seen N m. Tire pressure is also ft/lbs at least for my generation. Ambient air pressure is in kPa though.

 

Does anyone here actually know offhand how many kW of power a given car has? I've never seen someone use that in the real world.

[Battra92]

Fahrenheit is a much better scale in regards to daily use. 0 is Cold, 100 is Hot as Hades. It's also not arbitrary as 0F is the freezing point of a saturated salt solution (brine) with 180 degrees separating the freezing and boiling point.

 

I don't know if it was just London but in England outside of some packaged foods most everything was still Imperial or had both. I saw thermometers displaying both F and C. I saw clocks all in 12 hour time, the cars had MPH and signposts displayed in miles as far as I noticed. Heck, people refer to their weight in stones! Unless one is a surveyor or something, how often does one need to convert square feet into acreage? How often do you need to know the temperature in Celsius (an arbitrary scale that was flipped after old man Celsius's death) and relate it to 100?

 

I think pointing out again and again that Americans resisted metrication due to its impracticality and no actual benefit in daily life is really the sign of international snobbery. What do you care if I tell you that someone is 6'1" tall and weighs 220 lbs? Would be be more impressive to say he was 185.42cm and weighs 100Kg? Really, I don't get what the big deal is. You do your thing your way, and we'll continue with ours.

 

Oh and Fuchikoma, I've never heard Kw used for a car. We use horsepower.

[fuchikoma]

Actually, even though I still stick to some imperial units because of tradition, I think it makes sense to go all metric when possible. For one thing, imperial is truly in the minority now and a common measurement language would greatly help international project teams. It's like if everyone in China dug their heels in and refused to learn English, so any time you spoke with them it had to be in Mandarin. It's hard to relate quantifiable amounts between America and the rest of the world, to the extent that unit converting apps are basically American translators.

 

I don't know exactly how cold cold is, or how hot Hades is, but I do know where water freezes and boils at standard pressure. Water freezes all around me naturally and I boil water for cooking regularly. I have never used a saturated brine solution in everyday life. I'd imagine the only time I would is if I was calibrating a thermometer or trying to grow my own salt crystals. I never relate the temperature in Celsius to 100 when I read it. -20 is pretty cold. 20 is pretty warm outdoors - a few degrees below room temperature. -30 is dangerously cold and 30 is uncomfortably hot. Go another 10 either way and there's a pretty good chance of dying in that temperature.

 

Also, it's just wrong to say metric is impractical or has no benefit in daily life. You could measure something and tell me it's 3 millizubs. I don't even know what a zub measures, but I can tell you already that that is 0.3 centizubs, 0.03 decizubs and 0.003 zubs, which would be the base unit for that measure. As opposed to 12 zubs in a pob, 8 pobs in a fween, 11 fweens in a fof, etc. If you tell me there are 3 ounces of something, I have to figure out if you mean fluid volume or weight. In fluid, if I need a small measurement I guess I'd use a dram? Easy - 1/8 of an ounce - you'd know that if you'd explicitly studied it beforehand... but you'd have to check if it was a US or commonwealth dram, and if you're measuring spirits then it's about 10x as much than if it was another liquid! (Well, technically in the US it'd be 8.115365448442319x as much...) If it's weight, is that an avoirdupois ounce or a Troy ounce? ...since those are the top two of the six most common ounce weights. Is a gallon a US liquid gallon, a UK liquid gallon or a US dry gallon? To me, it seems there are so many ambiguous interpretations of imperial measurements it's like a deliberate attempt to miscommunicate and get something wrong...

 

(edit: haha... water never boils at STP)

Edited February 5, 2012 by fuchikoma

[deanb]

Simple European minds can't handle our more complex systems.

It's OUR complex system though

 

 

Fahrenheit is a much better scale in regards to daily use. 0 is Cold, 100 is Hot as Hades. It's also not arbitrary as 0F is the freezing point of a saturated salt solution (brine) with 180 degrees separating the freezing and boiling point.

 

I don't know if it was just London but in England outside of some packaged foods most everything was still Imperial or had both. I saw thermometers displaying both F and C. I saw clocks all in 12 hour time, the cars had MPH and signposts displayed in miles as far as I noticed. Heck, people refer to their weight in stones! Unless one is a surveyor or something, how often does one need to convert square feet into acreage? How often do you need to know the temperature in Celsius (an arbitrary scale that was flipped after old man Celsius's death) and relate it to 100?

 

I think pointing out again and again that Americans resisted metrication due to its impracticality and no actual benefit in daily life is really the sign of international snobbery. What do you care if I tell you that someone is 6'1" tall and weighs 220 lbs? Would be be more impressive to say he was 185.42cm and weighs 100Kg? Really, I don't get what the big deal is. You do your thing your way, and we'll continue with ours.

 

Oh and Fuchikoma, I've never heard Kw used for a car. We use horsepower.

Celsius works pretty well in day to day use too. Water, i.e rain etc, freezes below zero. So if the night before is below zero expect slippery roads. And then on the higher range you boil a kettle, or cook food in boiling water. It's my understanding that the only measurement at 100f is human body temperature, which unlike weather and cooking isn't exactly a common daily topic. I don't even know of what would be -17C in common occurrence to be 0F. Fahrenheit exists in the UK, but it's rarely used. Weather is in celsius, you cook in celsius. About the only time it crops up is ...well I guess when it appears on a thermometer or there's an american show on TV. Even my gran doesn't use it.

 

But yes, we still have a lot of imperial around, as just said (I'm sure mentioned many times) we did kinda come up with it. You guys did to those units what you did to our language though. Short changed yourself on a pint though. Ask for a pint in the UK and you get 568ml of ale. Ask for it in the US and you get 473ml instead. Miles and pints(of beer) are about it as far as imperial crops up in day to day life. you drives miles and mph, though you buy your petrol in litres. Apart from a pint(of beer) pretty much all liquid n food is in metric. 100grams of chocolate, 2 litres of pop, a kilo of carrots etc.

 

It's not internationally snobbery but US stubbornness. It's not snobbery to drop hundreds years old measurements full of tradition in favour of a more globally encompassing scheme. Dealing with US imperial just adds an unnecessary layer of logistics and expense to everything. Including day to day life. Can't use US recipes on the net for shit, what the fuck is a "cup" for crying out loud. And famously it causes a problem when engineers use imperial and destroy spacecraft cos of it. Which I don't get why that issue ever cropped up, space = science = metric units. Same with military. A "klick"(kilometre) is a US term after all. Actually pretty much every area of US that touches upon the rest of the world is using SI; science, military, trade(to a degree. If products are for regular shoppers I'd imagine they're sold in random amounts of grams)

 

Closing point: If metric has no benefit to daily life why is there not 180 cents in a dollar?

[CorgiShinobi]

Because having a hundred pennies to a dollar is enough!

 

No, but seriously, I say we use the Britain wizarding currency from now on. I'm sure by now the younger generations (or our two regions) has that down to the letter.

 

How many Knuts to a Galleon? 493!

 

EDIT: Fixed hilarious typo, ha ha!

Edited February 5, 2012 by Atomsk88

[fuchikoma]

To be serious though, there were non-metric currencies long ago. I was going to write about the old British coins - shillings, farthings, halfpence, but it's actually daunting. Probably why it's more standardized now. I read something about a penny being 1/240 of a pound, etc.

 

Japan had a bunch of old coins too - ryo, bu, shu, mon, but it's nice and simple now... no use for even decimals. Just coins for 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 and bills. To me, it makes more sense to measure subunits of the same thing in the same basic unit as larger amounts.

[deanb]

Yeah we had non-metric currency, then we switched cos it was shit tons easier. I see the frequent counterpoint to US using metric as it being expensive, but at least when you change over the money you're using is already metric Not a simple thing to re-mint an entire nations currency. If you want I could dig out my "hundred years in news" souvenir thing my grandad got me for millennium, it's got an page or so on the decimal change over in it.

 

I really don't see the point in the resistance. It's an inevitability, may as well get it over with sooner than later. Not like the rest of the world will be changing back to imperial.

 

 

In other news: Turns out "cooties" isn't real. I thought it was a US kids way of talking about STIs. Turns out it's more on par with the UK "kissing boys/girls makes your teeth fall out" thing.

[Battra92]

It's my understanding that the only measurement at 100f is human body temperature, which unlike weather and cooking isn't exactly a common daily topic.

 

approximately 98.6F or 37C. Really, there no connection with either.

 

you cook in celsius.

 

Yeah, this would be a big issue for me since I'm not exactly going to convert my stove over to the German system. My Polder probe will display both but I know my meat safety temps already so why relearn them?

 

But yes, we still have a lot of imperial around, as just said (I'm sure mentioned many times) we did kinda come up with it. You guys did to those units what you did to our language though. Short changed yourself on a pint though. Ask for a pint in the UK and you get 568ml of ale. Ask for it in the US and you get 473ml instead. Miles and pints(of beer) are about it as far as imperial crops up in day to day life.

 

We don't buy beer by the pint. I'm a teetotaler but a bottle I believe is 20oz.

 

you drives miles and mph, though you buy your petrol in litres.

We do? Gee, I just put a few gallons in the wife's car today. Hope it wasn't liters.

 

It's not internationally snobbery but US stubbornness. It's not snobbery to drop hundreds years old measurements full of tradition in favour of a more globally encompassing scheme. Dealing with US imperial just adds an unnecessary layer of logistics and expense to everything. Including day to day life. Can't use US recipes on the net for shit, what the fuck is a "cup" for crying out loud.

 

A cup is 8oz or half a pint. In liquid form that's half a pound.

 

Closing point: If metric has no benefit to daily life why is there not 180 cents in a dollar?

Specifically, I was referring to centigrade in which case it makes no difference what scale you use. Still, what difference does it make that I use a teaspoon instead of 5ml? Besides, I thought American food was horrid according to Europeans.

 

If you want to talk fucked up systems, look at the pre-decimal British money. Three farthings and a haypenny. Americans had Dollars and cents long before the limeys.

[deanb]

1. It's French not German

2. You don't have to relearn anything. You teach it to the kids, the older generation can get on by with whatever. As more kids learn SI and Metric it becomes the common form and by then most users of imperial are in nursing homes or whatever.

3. A pint is a glass, our bottles aren't pints (though some cans are). They're normally sold at 330ml when in bottles.

4. I didn't say "you american" I said "you" when talking about UK. Kinda clear when "you Americans" use gallons not the litres that I was referring to.

5. See with SI 100grams of butter is 100grams of butter. 100ml of milk is 100ml of milk. Not a cup = 8ounces of butter and 12ounces of milk.

 

Yeah, pre-decimal money. As has already been covered we changed it over in our "snobbish" ways to decimal. Not the best example when we stopped using it, as with most of the imperial measurements too. If you can actually identify that' it's fucked up to arbitrary scaling such as with farthings n shillings and the superiority in a decimal system such as in use with cents and dollars, why not the whole system?