Unified

The English are said to be quite quirky. A good example provide their units of measurement which are totally absurd. I have researched this because for a continental European guy like me that has been taught the metric system it is strange to say the least. The English themselves are not really helpful in regard of knowing their own units.

Let's begin with basic nutrition: this is measured in pints. You order a beer of that size in the pub and I buy my milk in bottles of two pints. Milk comes in other manifolds and beer as half a pint, too. A pint is 568ml and as I recently bought a 570ml bottle of ketchup, this seems to be some kind of basic nutrition as well.

The next bigger size, e. g. the prize at a pub quiz, is the gallon. To make it easy, this is eight pints, i. e. 4.55ml. Those of you proficient in American units will have noticed the difference: an American gallon is only 3.8l. This could mean either that the Americans can bear less alcohol or are greedier when it comes to prizes.

On cooking utensils you can find even more units. There is the cup – not A, B, C etc. – which is half a pint. Then there are the ounces being 1/20 pint when liquid and 1/16 pound as a weight.

A pound itself is currently 1.30 € or 453g. Body weight is measured in yet another unit, the stone. I think this comes from the fairytale "Little Red Riding Hood" where the hunter replaces the girl and her grandmother in the wolf's stomach by their equivalent in stones. A stone is consequently 14 pounds (18.31 € or 6.53kg).

At last some legths: the mile is as long as in the USA, namely 1.6km or 1760 yards. The latter is the same as three feet which are 12 inches in turn. You can find all these units on the road: distances and speeds use miles, everything shorter is signposted in yards and heigths of bridges for instance are given in feet and inch, sometimes additionally in metres.

To sum it up: there are at least three units for everything, the factors between each two are always different. Let me repeat the numbers from the text above: 2, 3, 8, 12, 14, 16, 20, 1760. If you convert it to metric units, you get something odd and the Americans have their own units for some parts.

A positive thought at the end: if you have to live with this weirdness, you either develop a really good visual judgement or a good memory and fast mental arithmetic.