I'm British. School taught us metric, but there's a lot of old imperial measurements still in common use. I'll buy a 2 litre bottle of lemonade, but get a pint in the pub.
mpg is so infuriating since a vast majority of car content is in English. Thankfully some include l/100km in some way because I'm never sure which gallon they are using so just converting isn't an option.
The French basically set up the British mythos in 1066. Nobody goes around calling the UK a former colony of the Normans. 244 years is sufficiently long enough not to refer to the USA as a colony. Half of Europe was a colony of Napoleon and Hitler. We do not go around tossing that slur about. The last time I checked, the UK required assistance in 2 world wars AND the multi-decade long Cold War from "colonies".
No shit? Seems like the Revolution was just yesterday...or maybe that was just my re-watch of "Hamilton" /s
But hey, if you want to play pedantic ping-pong:
The USA was not "a colony" but 13 colonies, all of which--along with the 35 other entities that had also became states by then--were just as hamstrung in WWII as the English were. We did not "win" WWII any more than the UK or France or Russia could individually win it. The only way that happened was that our nascent Military-Industrial Complex found more profit in fighting Nazi Germany than in helping them whereas previously, it was the other way around.
If you think that's bad...Both Americans and English refer to the Atlantic Ocean as "The Big Pond" even though it's not a pond. WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END??
It's similar in Ireland too. I guess because we're neighbours and we're at one point part of the UK.
Motorway speeds are in Kms/HR. Height will be measured in feet and inches. Weight will be in stone, or maybe kilos, or pounds depending on who you talk to. Distances will be in Kms but you'll have people refer to things in miles. Land sizes are in acreage, but I've also seen hectares used. Volumes are almost always in liters however we do use pints. Cooking measurements are often in cups and spoons, but you'll also see them in kg. Temperatures are always Celsius though we can agree on that.
My first car here was imported from Northern Ireland. And was set to miles for everything. I remember my driving instructor at the time being like "eh yeah just subtract 20 from whatever your Speedo says. It'll be close enough to the speed in Kms." He wasn't too wrong I guess haha.
There was a half hearted attempt by brexidiots to get us to go back to imperial weights in shops, instead of grams and kilos, but that ship has sailed.
And although the roads all use miles, the national cycle path network officially uses kilometres
Honestly, i don't think thats too bad an idea. As long as we had one system used for everything instead of picking and choosing between two I'd back it.
it's weird how people decided to signal they were smarter and more scientific by thinking the metric system is somehow 'superior' and therefore they were 'superior' if they bought into it. Doesn't really matter what you call units...a unit is a unit....
There's a pretty big gap between yards and miles, and most people (even the ones who think imperial measurements are a good idea) can't remember the subdivisions in between (rod/pole/perch, chain, furlong).
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u/HoveringPorridge Oct 09 '25 edited Oct 09 '25
No one really wanted to though, and as a result a horrible mix of imperial and metric is used in current day.
The only one that's completely set in stone is distance; miles/yards/feet/inches. Kilometres are beyond my realm of understanding.
Milk and beer are sold by the pint but fuel is in litres for some godforsaken reason. Thermometers tend to have Centigrade and Fahrenheit listed etc.
I wish we could just decide on one or the other!