How familiar are non-Americans with traditional measurements?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Perhaps not relevant for the reasons you describe in Europe, but as we in Canada live next door to the USA, I’d say that what we are exposed to is relevant indeed. Because most of us live close to the US border, we get a large dose of American news (yep, even the local news from places like Spokane, Detroit, and Buffalo), and sports broadcasts, for example, in addition to music and movies. It is not at all unusual to get a TV promo for an upcoming newscast that gives the weather in Fahrenheit, for example, or to hear that local American police are looking for a man, “five-foot-ten, a hundred-and-seventy-pounds.” As for periodicals, those from the US and written for an American audience are quite common on our newsstands (examples would include Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times), and it’s no surprise that they don’t use metric. I’d suggest that exposure to American media is very relevant–but I’d also suggest that relevancy decreases the farther one gets from the US and/or its English-language media.

Even so, I’d agree with Cat Whisperer, above, that we use a crazy mishmash of both systems. Or, we simply avoid the problem altogether:

“How far is it to Regina?”
“About six hours.”
“Will you make it on a tank of gas? How much does your tank hold, anyway?”
“Enough to get me halfway there. I’ll fill up again in Swift Current.”

42

In Britain familiarity with Imperial units has a lot to do with how old you are. The conversion has been gradually happening for most of my life. By secondary school I was pretty much working in metric for science and imperial for everyday things like cooking and weather.

Reading the thread I’ve realised that I’ve used four different systems of oven temperature. The first oven I remember wasn’t that precise and was marked cool through warm to moderate then hot. That was soon replaced by a spanking new one marked in Fahrenheit. After leaving home I’ve cooked with gas for about 25 years and that’s calibrated in “gas marks” 1 to 9. I always kept a mental picture of how both fahrenheit and gas marks coresponded to the original cool to hot calibration. Now I’ve just had an electric fan oven calibrated in Celsius installed and I am confused. It’s ok with a recipe but the fan means you are supposed to reduce temperatures a bit, for my own recipes I’m just guessing at the moment. I’ve not burnt anything yet!

43

Pakistani here. We have been trying to convert to metric for the last three decades and it is happening…slowly. In addition to the Imperial measurements, there are also multiple traditional measurements as well.

So a persons height and weight is in imperial as is his temperature. The temperature outside OTH is in Celsius, distances are in both miles and kilometres. e still speak about cloth per yard, how many feet of office space and finally for measurements of units of land, you have local units like kanal and maraba which differ from place to place.

44

Most Americans don’t know about rods, roods, perches, chains, or bushels. They aren’t common units even for us.

If you really want to drive for changes, you need to define the measurements in the units you want people to use. Put a convenient conversion chart in the front of the book. Then people will see the recipe in grams, have to look up how many dry ounces that is or whatever, then realize it is much easier to learn the units in grams and be done.

The US has had fits and starts with converting to metric. One of the big hurdles is how dual units are done. They took the same standard size containers, then put whatever direct conversion to metric in parenthesis. But is it easier to remember 8 fl oz, or 236.6 ml? So there’s no impetus to change which system you think in.

If during the metric push the US had resized containers, then you would buy 8.45 fl oz or 250 ml, then there would have been a selection pressure for Americans to start thinking in metric units.

Look at the one success we did have in metric conversions - the 2 Liter soda bottle. Why was it a success? Because it was a 2 liter bottle, not a 1.89 liter bottle.

45

I’m in my mid fifties and had all my schooling in imperial units until late high school (and that has different units from US ones too), so I was grounded in feet, inches, ounces and lbs and all that went with them.

I can still tell you how many inches in a mile (63360) or ounces in a pint (20), but all everyday measurements are metric, except baby birth weights! Why them, I guess we don’t really know. That is to say, the weight will be given as so many grams, but also as lbs and ozs, and the parents and grandparents will only know the lbs and ozs part.

So, someone my age will be reasonably familiar with imperial but may not realise that some units are different in US measures, e.g. ounces in a pint, so size of gallon is different. An imperial gallon is 4.55 litres, but a US gallon is 3.78 litres.

Body weight is a bit different from what I learnt too. We’d measure in stones and lbs, not lbs alone. Now it’s universally in kilograms. (I’m about 76 kg, and for the life of me I can’t just think how many pounds that is without using a calculator to convert it.)

Traffic speeds changed from mph to km/h shortly after I started driving, so my first car had a speedo marked in mph but the speed limits were all km/h. Little stick-on labels showed the metric speed limits on my old speedo.

Building construction is all measured in metric, but of course many existing buildings have old sizes in them. My house was built in the late 1930s so all measurements are as used then: 4x2 framing timber, 18 inch stud spacing and so on. I guess if you are a builder then you’d be familiar with both sets of sizes. Many supplies are close but not exact in size. e.g. A 4x2 is now 100 x 50. A sheet of drywall may be 2400 x 1200 rather than 8 x 4.

Temperatures are only done in Celsius now, so I have a couple of conversion short cuts in my head. 16 C = 61 F, 28 C = 82 F. And 37 C = 98.6 F. Mind you, with everyone using Celsius and not trying to convert all the time, you soon get used to judging temperatures in your local scale. Comfortable outside temp at the moment is about 22 or 23 degrees.

Land sizes may be more of an issue. Area is measured in square metres or hectares. 1 hectare is 10,000 square metres and is about 2 and a half acres. City section sizes used to be commonly given as a quarter acre, which is about 1100 square metres, but on land documents would be given as a rod or 40 perches. Measuring land area in square feet was not widely done, so it is not easy to visualise when given in US contexts, or as 100 feet by 50 feet, for example.