I haven't bought anything in pounds, ounces or pints in a very, very long time.
Except for beer and certain herbal remedies.
Either way pounds and ounces etc are based on a medieval french measuring system known as Avoirdupois.
May be the Americans have stuck with it for so long to show their gratitude for the essential help they got from the French during their revolution and the following War of 1812? ;-)
Whatever happened to making change in pounds, shillings and pence. And what is a farthing, what is a half-crown.
My knowledge of the former English money system is limited to what i have learned through Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Rumpole of the Bailey and As Time Goes By.
My knowledge of the former English money system is limited to what i have learned through Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Rumpole of the Bailey and As Time Goes By.
Not to quibble, but exactly one province is officially bilingual (New Brunswick), though there are considerable numbers of French speakers in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Manitoba, and of course Quebec is officially unilingual French but has a considerable number of English speakers (though there are parts of Quebec where speaking English will get you a blank stare).
This is especially problematic with telling time. If the time is 3:45 an American will say it is "a quarter of four", which to me sounds like a long way to say one o'clock, same as half of two. Canadians who grew up with clocks with hands and dials would say "a quarter to four", while the "pur laine" digital kids would say 3:45 (because they never learned to tell time).
In English we say half past 2, in Germany they mean half TO 3. Where I grew up we still used 'five and twenty past'. I am pure Yokel and proud of it 🙂
(or as my first wife said, 'my grandparents had servants, your grandparents were servants'. Glad to be shot of her)
So 1970's, one of my local pubs is called the Half Crown, another is called The Anchor, the building dates from 1380.
To paraphrase Monty Python, what have the Americans done for us?
I was taught how to beat a quarter inch steel, supported by an anvil or any pile of sand, in any shape with a hammer. How to make it more pliable by heating it up, or harder by cooling it down. What much good is it to me now ?
(any appearance of intelligence is a figment of your imagination, not mine)
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Jack - can strongly recommend Ngiao Marsh / Roderick Alleyn as an excellent follow-on to Rumpole and Father Brown --- (her Wikipedia article) --- as unbiased and independent data sources for curious Yanks like ourselves.
Amusing, though taken off-line in '70/'71, we still learned about old UK currency at English class.
I'll match your two bob, and raise by a florin.
I'll match your two bob, and raise by a florin.
Everything in this household stops for "Miss Fisher" on Tuesday nights, after which "Fr. Brown" falls off his bicycle.
This thread has devolved into "nothing to do with calculus" . My advice to the small-fry is to do all the problems! You'll find that 20 years later it comes in handy. The question may be ineptly written, vague, etc., but so are the real problems you find in life.
There was a question in the AP Physics Test (or whatever they called it) circa 1967 which only an astronaut or Caltech/MIT grad would know how to answer. Perhaps Scott knew the answer!
This thread has devolved into "nothing to do with calculus" . My advice to the small-fry is to do all the problems! You'll find that 20 years later it comes in handy. The question may be ineptly written, vague, etc., but so are the real problems you find in life.
There was a question in the AP Physics Test (or whatever they called it) circa 1967 which only an astronaut or Caltech/MIT grad would know how to answer. Perhaps Scott knew the answer!
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When I was in the tourism business here in Nova Scotia I heard that colloquialism from American clients many times. I think they were mostly East Coast, though I'm thinking mid-Atlantic to Southern. Either way, not my place to justify or explain, but it was an elocution that I heard many times from Americans (and that confused me almost every time).
Ahh, the mystical Florin. When I visited the Netherlands in the 1990's the currency was Guilders, which seemed to be the same as Florins. Something that cost 10 Guilders in a shop was labeled 10 Fl; was I mistaken?
Then I went to a "coffee shop" where they had a menu for "smokeables" which I found hard to understand. It listed a variety of cannabis products, then a number like "25G". I was mystified! Did it mean 25 Guilders for some unspecified amount of product, or a number of grams for an unspecified amount of money? I got it sorted out, but unfortunately there was a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sitting beside me who did not like the idea that someone at the same table might purchase something illegal, so he abruptly split.
I had always reckoned that there are 20 oz in a pint because there are 20 shilling to the pound. No?
Prize for the first to use it in a sentence. (Yay).
Z is one of those letters that should be shot, quartered and dropped from a cliff then buried in soft peat.
We did use those values, and gave them up for metres around the centre of the '70s
I'd tell you to take those with a grain of salt, but I don't watch any.
We still bow to HM, we just don't talk about it much these days. The world is a different place.. dang kids and their I-thingies.
That's always been my take. It just doesn't seem right - 20° is the difference between short sleeves and freezing yao.
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