I'm quite fond of Vincent van Go - no, Vincent van Gock - no, Vincent van Goch - no, Vincent van Hoch. Van Hoch? Who he?
Pronunciation problems? Where there's a Will there's a way: "For who would suffer... The proud man's COntumely..."
I'll tell you why we resist metric: because we usually get less! Most bottles and cans of beer are now 500ml - but the price has not been reduced by a similar amount! With distance, too, we get less; any fool can run 1500 metres in under 4 minutes, but it takes an Englishman to run a mile in the time! With weight, of course, metric gives an advantage - I convert my own weight into pounds at the rate of 2:1 instead of 2.2:1, so I can feel better about it [of course, I then convert it into stones and pounds!]
And finally: why does anyone ever talk about mpg? We buy the stuff in litres; the odometer registers in miles [my Saxo neatly does 10 miles to a litre].
And finally finally: if we'd been etymologically consistent there would never have been such a misbegotten Mischling as television! [I mean the name, of course - telescope already having been taken... and the tele bit MUST be to do with distance and not purpose, goodness knows!]
Pronunciation problems? Where there's a Will there's a way: "For who would suffer... The proud man's COntumely..."
I'll tell you why we resist metric: because we usually get less! Most bottles and cans of beer are now 500ml - but the price has not been reduced by a similar amount! With distance, too, we get less; any fool can run 1500 metres in under 4 minutes, but it takes an Englishman to run a mile in the time! With weight, of course, metric gives an advantage - I convert my own weight into pounds at the rate of 2:1 instead of 2.2:1, so I can feel better about it [of course, I then convert it into stones and pounds!]
And finally: why does anyone ever talk about mpg? We buy the stuff in litres; the odometer registers in miles [my Saxo neatly does 10 miles to a litre].
And finally finally: if we'd been etymologically consistent there would never have been such a misbegotten Mischling as television! [I mean the name, of course - telescope already having been taken... and the tele bit MUST be to do with distance and not purpose, goodness knows!]
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