How Canadians Confuse the World

[AndalayBay]

You know the really funny thing about this? I weigh my cats in kilograms but myself in pounds... We have a digital meat thermometer that's stuck in Celsius so we keep having to look up the temperature for when something is done. If you say the temperature outside in Fahrenheit, I have no idea what that is.

I think they do the same thing in the UK. They sell gas in litres but highway speeds and distances are in miles. They got temperature right though: Celsius.

[Vorians]

We call it petrol rather than gas. Yes, distances by road are measured in miles rather than kilometres, and temperatures are Celsius. Fahrenheit is meaningless gibberish.

 

But weights, heights, shorter distances and fluids, I think that's something of a generational thing. Older people are more likely to think imperial rather than metric, while younger people tend to know metric and be clueless about imperial. Personally I think distances in metric, but I also know feet and inches, especially for people height - no clue how far a yard is. Weights and fluids I never did pay any attention to so couldn't guess something's weight or fluid amount in any measurement, but things can be sold by the pound or by the kilo, and cooking might use (milli)litres or fluid ounces (whatever those are).

 

But hey, at least you Canadians know how to spell (most of the time, I see that 'metres' was misspelt there).

[AndalayBay]

There was another post about the difference in names for things in American versus English. Line = queue, windshield = windscreen...

It also depends on education. Scientists and engineers will know and use metric, even in the States. One of the meteorologists on the news program we watch is from the States but he knows and uses metric because that's what they used in school.

We're finding that younger people are using imperial more, unfortunately. And what the heck is a stone? I know a lot of English that specify weight in stone. Jimi tells me it's 16 pounds. Way too complicated for me. Oh and then you've got US fluid ounces versus British fluid ounces!

Yes they did spell metre wrong!

One more odd thing for us: we use Fahrenheit for the oven, but we switched our refrigerator settings to use Celsius.

[TomTesoro]

It's funny how you both think your spellings are correct.

[AndalayBay]

You’re outnumbered here. Mercer knows how to spell correctly too.

[TomTesoro]

We started our own country so we wouldn't have to deal with people putting unnecessary U's in places they don't belong. Everyone else is simply incorrect.

[AndalayBay]

Actually you lot are the ones that make us keep those U's. As George Bernard Shaw said "There even are places where English completely disappears. In America, they haven’t used it for years!"