Quote:
Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b
AFAIK (from watching BBC America and some other British programs), the British tend to use Metric and English measurements interchangeably. Am I right in this?
|
To a degree. Anything to do with driving (road signs, speedometers, etc) is always in miles. If you go to a pub you'd buy a pint (or half pint) of beer. However if you were to go to the supermarket to buy some fruit or veg it would be sold by the gram / kilo.
So not so much interchangeable in the sense that one person might use metric and another would use imperial, more a case of one type of measurement being the standard for one thing and the other being the standard for different things. If that makes sense...
To a certain extent age also comes into it. I'm 45 this year. If someone asked me how far it was to the pub at the end of my road I'd say two hundred yards. If you asked some of my colleagues who are in their mid twenties they'd probably say two hundred metres. I know what my weight is in stones / pounds, didn't have a clue what it was in kilos until my short stay in hospital last year, whereas my colleagues would use kilos. I guess it's what they're taught in schools these days.