This may be an FQ question but too silly for that so MPSIMS it is…
I was watching a video where an Italian shipmaker (cruise ships…big ones) mentioned they had hit a milestone. Clearly English is a second language to him and, clearly, Italy does not use miles as a unit of measure. Indeed, only the US, Liberia and Myanmar still use the Imperial system (miles and whatnot).
So, why is a non-native English speaker using “milestone” colloquially? There are two English speaking nations that still uses miles (and Liberia barely counts for this I think). All the rest are metric.
My guess would be that the phrase originated in Roman times, based on the Roman milestone. The phrase likely stayed in use, even while miles have not. I don’t have a cite.
The German word for milestone also still is “Meilenstein”, though we were one of the first nations to use the metric system. It’s just a quirk of how languages works, I think. There are similar examples in German like “ellenlang” (denoting something exceptionally long), while the “Elle” as a length unite has long been obsolete. We also still say “auf Heller und Pfennig”, although both currency units are not used anymore. (the Pfennig since 2002). In idiomatic language, there’s no need for standardization.
A few hundred years from now, long after Liberia and possibly even the United States have come to their senses about the metric system, everyone will probably still know what a “milestone” is even though they’d have to delve deep into its etymology to know what it ever had to do with a “stone” or what a “mile” was. But they’ll likely still be using the word. Such is the English language. What, you thought maybe it was logical in some way?
Since we no longer place stones to mark distance, isn’t “stone” in the metaphor equally anachronistic? Perhaps instead of “milestone” to indicate a significant stage of accomplishment we should say “GPS waypoint”.
Metrication in Canada began in 1970 and ceased in 1985. While Canada has converted to the metric system for many purposes, there is still significant use of non-metric units and standards in many sectors of the Canadian economy and everyday life today. This is mainly due to historical ties with the United Kingdom, the traditional use of the imperial system of measurement in Canada, proximity to the United States, and strong public opposition to metrication during the transition period.
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Canadians typically use a mix of metric and imperial measurements in their daily lives. One area where imperial measures continue to be used, despite official practice, is with respect to human height and weight. Newborns are measured in kilograms at hospitals, but the birth weight and length is also announced to family and friends in pounds, ounces, feet and inches.
[snip]
Supermarkets will often advertise foods such as meats and produce “per pound”, and small businesses are exempt from having metric scales and legally sell by the pound.
You can find other examples in supposedly “metric” countries elsewhere in the world.
That’s sorta kinda true, but not completely. Announcing a newborn’s weight and size in traditional imperial measures may be done informally for the convenience of family, but it isn’t really pertinent to whether the metric system is officially in place. My doctor records height in cm and weight in kg. My driver’s license specifies my height in centimeters. If some medical person inquires about my weight I give it to them in pounds because I’m an old fart with old habits, and they deal with it, but again, that doesn’t say much about the system that’s been adopted. Likewise I often ask for things at the deli counter in terms of ounces or pounds, but I hear young whippersnappers around me ask for things in terms of grams and kilograms, and that’s how everything is priced.
It’s true that supermarkets will sometimes advertise stuff as a sale price “per pound”, but the actual items are always priced in metric units. I suspect the “per pound” bit is a convenient mendacity because it’s a much lower number than “per kg” and the practice isn’t enforced in the same way as actual product labeling.
The one thing that mostly remains in traditional units in Canada is oven temperatures, and to some extent some other cooking-relating measures, despite some efforts to push it to metric. Probably because of old cookbooks, traditional recipes handed down through generations, and the influence of recipes and cookbooks from the US. My stove displays temperature in Fahrenheit and, unlike my car or house thermostat, I don’t think it even has an option to change it. But my house thermostat and my car’s outside temperature indicators are in Celsius because it just makes sense for them to conform with weather reports. It’s the same reason that I’m fine with Fahrenheit for cooking temperatures, because it’s consistent with most printed and online recipes and never has to be reconciled with weather or house temperatures.
My wife grew up in a country (China) where inches, pounds, etc. were not used so she is much more familiar with metric units. Sometimes I half-heartedly translate idioms when I use them (e.g. “give him a centimeter and he’ll take a kilometer”, “a thousand-meter state”). It’s more or less pointless, though.
My current USA apartment has appliances dating from 2016 when the building was built. One of the many items in the settings menu is temp control & display in F or C. Another is time display in am/pm or 24-hour style. These are US branded midrange Whirlpool, but of course like all white goods are manufactured for that brand by some contract factory in China.
Kitchen appliances have long lives. But F/C appliances are being made and sold en masse and have been for some years now. I’d imagine at least some young Canadians set theirs to C since they find F bafflingly unfamiliar. Or maybe units shipped to Canada factory-default to C.
Real short version: F and pounds and feet are dying out. Just like us. If not our kids, certainly our great grandkids will find traditional units weird.
Unless of course we’re talking about Murrika! Fuck Yeah! Home of Fahrenheit, Feet, and Fools! Forever!
With modern appliances it is trivial for them to program the digital readouts to display whatever you like and the appliance figures it out behind the scenes.
I think where you will find that conversion impossible is appliances with a dial. Not sure if they make those anymore though.
A few years ago (2018) I lived in an apartment with a stove that had a dial. It was a nice apartment too but the stove was old(ish) and you could tell it was cheap (the crap usually reserved for student apartments). But it worked fine.
You’re correct. Amazingly, I have the original manuals for all my appliances so I checked the one for the stove. It turns out to have an awesome number of settings that I never knew about and will never use, including the ability to change the temperature display to be F or C. Not gonna change it, though, because as I said earlier, the best measurement unit is the one that conforms with your normal reference points. So ºF for oven temps and meat doneness, ºC for outdoor and indoor living temperatures. The two are completely unrelated.
Incidentally, going through the stove user manual was a hoot! One reason it took a while to find the ºF/ºC change feature is that it had such a humongous list of features that no one would ever use. But the funniest reason was that just about every second paragraph was “CAUTION!” or “WARNING!” followed by something like “may cause serious injury or death”. Either I have unknowingly harboured a dangerous death-trap in my kitchen all these years, or that manual was written by a team of lawyers.
Ovens and stoves are inherently dangerous, what with all the heat and maybe even open fire. So when your target market has the “common sense” of toddlers, you kinda need to do some CYA. Of course the toddlers won’t read that stuff. But when they burn themselves and call some attorney to sue the manufacturer, that’s when the manual’s defensive measures pay off. They hope.
Yeah, the only thing dumber than customers is liability disclaimers.
