Proposal: Language code "de-DE-trad"

A. Vine andrea.vine@sun.com
Thu, 14 Feb 2002 12:26:18 -0800


OK, folks, let's not turn this into a forum to pick on the US about its lack of
metric use.  It has no relevance to IETF language tags and their acceptance, and
it goes against the principles of internationalization.

A lot of things would be easier if we all adopted the same currency, the same
numeric formats, the same writing system.  But we retain our cultural
differences, and that's what makes the world go around.  And for some of us, it
provides us with jobs :-)

Vive la difference !

Andrea

Martin Duerst wrote:
> 
> At 12:32 02/02/13 -0800, Mark Crispin wrote:
> 
> >Don't be angry.  Governments, and their unilateral actions, are the enemy.
> >Not people.
> 
> Well, yes and no. In most countries, women were given the right
> to vote by parliament, not by a popular vote. In Switzerland,
> popular vote was used, and it took considerably longer to get
> it approved.
> 
> >This isn't well known in Europe, but the US government officially metrified
> >the US in 1866.  That's right, 146 years ago.  Entire generations of American
> >schoolchildren have been indoctrinated about how wonderful metric is, but it
> >hasn't changed the fact that the American people are opposed to metrification
> >and will not allow it to happen.
> 
> I have yet to meet an American who is actually opposed to the metric
> system. (I'm sure there must be some somewhere.) My impression is that
> it's much more an issue of lazyness.
> 
> And in a very basic sense, the US is indeed metrified. The definition of
> inch is 2.54 cm (always wondered why they didn't make that 2.5cm, but
> then again with the /16 divisions, it wouldn't have helped that much).
> Before the metrification, it was 2.54 and something odd. So the goverment
> did the metrification, and kept the inch as a cover to not let people
> notice :-).
> 
> >Not that metric confuses us: when we see a bolt that looks like a 5/16, but is
> >too big for the wrench, yet is sloppy with a 3/8 wrench, we know perfectly
> >well that it's an 8mm and we get out our metric tools.  We know that when
> >we're in Canada, a 100 km/h speed limit sign means 60 MPH, a 40 km/h sign
> >means 25 MPH, etc.
> 
> Yes, and when you buy a package of food, it tells you how many
> milligrams of this or that ingredient are in a serving. (I always wondered
> what system the unit 'serving' was in, imperial or metric :-)
> And water bottles are sold as 1.5 liters or 2 liters, because it would be
> too expensive to make them in different sizes for different parts of
> the world, and pints or gallons would be unacceptable (and maybe even
> against the law in certain cases) in metric countries.
> 
> On the other hand, sadly enough we have 12 inch screens for notebooks,
> and 1200/inch resolution printers in Europe and Japan.
> 
> >The point being that governments can't get away with doing something like this
> >in a democracy unless the people let them.  I think that it's quite important
> >to this discussion to understand if this new orthography is going to succeed,
> >or if the people of the affected nations are going to render it into an
> >impotent joke (much like the metrification of the US).
> 
> For me, the inconsistent mixture of units used in the US is a joke.
> I'm always looking out for new little details when traveling to the US.
> One area where I have seen quite a bit of improvement is temperature.
> Thermostats in many hotels now allow to switch between C and F.
> And announcement in US airlines, at least on international flights,
> now mention both. A few years ago, I regularly had to call the flight
> attendant to ask what the temperature that the pilot announced was
> supposed to mean.
> 
> With most other countries than the US now firmly switched to the
> metric system, my personal hope is that that will create enough
> influence on the US to turn them around in practice.
> 
> Regards,    Martin.
> 
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