Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Adam H. Kerman" Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv Subject: Re: [OT] Is English just badly pronounced French? Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:51:48 -0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 28 Message-ID: References: <20240331135630.000017f4@example.com> Injection-Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:51:49 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="34319cd3626ebbb6a2b9d51c284dbf18"; logging-data="2061884"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18vyfGLEmMYNxW5Pt0N+8jw837arGruaxE=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:xdu3tMk0H752jHaupJm6NWD38IQ= X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010) Bytes: 2151 suzeeq wrote: >On 3/31/2024 10:56 AM, Rhino wrote: >>Sun, 31 Mar 2024 06:35:33 -0700 suzeeq : >>>>. . . >>>While GB officially went metric, many people still use the Imperial >>>measurements, at least for linear measures, not so much for weight. >>The Brits weigh themselves in "stones" not pounds or kilograms. (I >>believe a stone is 14 pounds.) These stones are definitely not metric >>but I'm not sure they can truly be called Imperial either since they >>aren't used anywhere outside the UK, as far as I know. >Yeah, I don't know where stone comes from. I was thinking smaller, like >pounds and ounces. These were literal stones of a uniform weight used in trade, and depending on the trade good, varied from 6 pounds to 21 pounds. They would have been used on a balance scale. Yes, they are part of the Imperial system. Various acts of Parliament starting in 1835 were intended to phase them out but that obviously never happened. As a matter of trivia, yes the British Imperial System and U.S. Customary System use a unit of mass. It's called the slug. It's derived from a hypthetical 1 pound force accelerating a mass by 1 ft/second squared.