Thread: God Save the Queen!

I think that apart from an understandable desire to follow their own traditions people are generally averse to metric system because they think it's something incredibly complex.

In school, I've used nothing but the metric system since, I would guess, the fifth grade (i.e, when I was about 10 years old). This includes high school physics as well as calculus, and also organic chemistry lab in college. As a result, I probably understand the metric system on a "practical" level better than the average American. (For instance, I know that a liter of milk weighs about 1 kg, and will fit into a hollow cube measuring 10 cm on each side.)

Even so, it still seems a bit "unnatural" to me to use the metric system in everyday life.

Part of the reason is that, to me, metric units sound artificial and un-poetic, since English is full of proverbs and expressions relating to the Imperial units ("Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile"; or "He's a 98-pound weakling"), but we've yet to develop any similar expressions based on metric units. (Okay, I can think of one -- "Millimeter peter", referring to a man with an extremely small хрен!)

Also, some Imperial units have the advantage of being derived from powers of 2, which makes it a bit easier to estimate measurements "by eyeball". (Dividing a square sheet of paper into 8 equal rectangles is easy -- you fold it in half, then in half again, then in half again! Dividing the same square into 10 equal rectangles is not so easy, because it's difficult to visually approximate one-fifth.)

Even so, I would certainly agree that, in general, metric names are much more logical and simpler to remember, and that it's easier to do calculations with metric units (especially in the case of physics problems where you have to inter-relate mass, distance, and force, for example).

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

Part of the reason is that, to me, metric units sound artificial and un-poetic, since English is full of proverbs and expressions relating to the Imperial units ("Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile"; or "He's a 98-pound weakling"), but we've yet to develop any similar expressions based on metric units. (Okay, I can think of one -- "Millimeter peter", referring to a man with an extremely small хрен!)

I agree, metric units are quite impersonal. The only "metric" saying I can think of right now is "метр в кепке", referring to someone very short.
Nothing prevents Russians from using expressions, mentioning traditional Russian measures, though: "пуд соли съесть", "косая сажень в плечах", "писать аршинными буквами", "бешеной собаке(корове) семь верст не крюк", "Мал золотник, да дорог", etc. You must have heard some of them.

PS. "Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile" - We'd say: "Give him a finger, and he'll bite the whole hand off".

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

I agree, metric units are quite impersonal. The only "metric" saying I can think of right now is "метр в кепке", referring to someone very short.

I would translate this as "He's three feet tall if you include his hat," although that's not a traditional saying in English. But in reference to someone who is extremely skinny (like a supermodel), we can say "He/she is 100 pounds soaking wet" (that is, including the weight of the wet clothes).

Nothing prevents Russians from using expressions, mentioning traditional Russian measures, though: "пуд соли съесть", "косая сажень в плечах", "писать аршинными буквами", "бешеной собаке(корове) семь верст не крюк", "Мал золотник, да дорог", etc. You must have heard some of them.

I've heard some of them:

Мал золотник, да дорог -- lit., "It weighs barely a zolotnik (~4 g), but is expensive/precious" -- thus, "Good things come in small packages"

писать аршинными буквами -- literally, "to write/print in letters one arshin (~70 cm) high"; loosely, it would sound more colloquial in English to say "letters a foot-and-a-half high". But anyway, the real meaning is "to print in a very large font, like the headline of a tabloid newspaper":



бешеной собаке(корове) семь верст не крюк -- usually, крюк means "a hook", but here I think it means "a hook-shaped path", in other words, a "detour". So the whole thing means "Seven versts (~7 km) is not enough of a detour to go around a dog/cow with rabies (бешенство)". I would guess that this is roughly equivalent to the English "I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole"?

I wasn't totally sure about the meaning of the others and had to go Googling.

косая сажень в плечах -- Apparently a sazhen' was roughly equivalent to an English "fathom" (~2 m), so the expression means очень широкоплечный, "very broad-shouldered". But what exactly is a косая сажень (lit., "a slanted sazhen'")? Apparently it was an "approximate fathom" measured from a man's left heel to the fingers of his stretched-out right hand.

And finally:

пуд соли съесть -- This is quite simple to translate: "To completely eat up a pood (~16 kg) of salt." But what the heck does it really mean?? From Googling, I find that it's actually a shortened form of a longer expression: "You don't really know someone until you've lived with him long enough to finish a pood of salt between the two of you" (presumably, this would take several years).

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

косая сажень в плечах -- Apparently a sazhen' was roughly equivalent to an English "fathom" (~2 m), so the expression means очень широкоплечный, "very broad-shouldered". But what exactly is a косая сажень (lit., "a slanted sazhen'")? Apparently it was an "approximate fathom" measured from a man's left heel to the fingers of his stretched-out right hand.

Помимо косой сажени были и другие:

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

бешеной собаке(корове) семь верст не крюк -- usually, крюк means "a hook", but here I think it means "a hook-shaped path", in other words, a "detour". So the whole thing means "Seven versts (~7 km) is not enough of a detour to go around a dog/cow with rabies (бешенство)". I would guess that this is roughly equivalent to the English "I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole"?

Actually I would say it roughly means: A mad dog doesn't consider a seven mile extra path to be even a minor difficulty (impediment).

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

пуд соли съесть -- This is quite simple to translate: "To completely eat up a pood (~16 kg) of salt." But what the heck does it really mean?? From Googling, I find that it's actually a shortened form of a longer expression: "You don't really know someone until you've lived with him long enough to finish a pood of salt between the two of you" (presumably, this would take several years).

"To completely eat up a pood (~16 kg) of salt." when used as a stand alone phrase it means "to became very experienced in something".

Originally Posted by CoffeeCup

"To completely eat up a pood (~16 kg) of salt." when used as a stand alone phrase it means "to became very experienced in something".

I disagree, this expression indicates a closeness in relationships between two people (я с ним пуд соли съел) means that the two lived through much and know each other perfectly while when you become experienced in something you say "я на этом собаку съел" (I ate a dog at this). But no, old Russians didn't eat dogs, and I don't know why we say that. Nobody knows, actually.

Originally Posted by Ramil

I disagree, this expression indicates a closeness in relationships between two people (я с ним пуд соли съел) means that the two lived through much and know each other perfectly while when you become experienced in something you say "я на этом собаку съел" (I ate a dog at this). But no, old Russians didn't eat dogs, and I don't know why we say that. Nobody knows, actually.

I agree when there is a talk about two people. I agree about the dog which have been eaten. I think that there is the third case when we talk about a single person which has not experience in something and when we point that it will take him hard to get this experience it is possible to say "You'll need to eat up 35 pounds of salt (while going through this)".

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

Мал золотник, да дорог -- lit., "It weighs barely a zolotnik (~4 g), but is expensive/precious" -- thus, "Good things come in small packages"

I had always been under impression, the original Russian saying literary means something else. Золотник (a piston valve) is the smallest, yet a critical part of a steam engine. Золотник (распределитель) — Википедия
So, I think an English equivalent of the saying "Мал золотник, да дорог" should say something like: "the smallest looking something/someone sometimes is the most important one".

As to the metric vs the imperial systems, the pros and cons are obvious. All derivatives of the measuring system employing part of the human body are more intuitive for the visualization and a unified system facilitates easier and more precise calculations and conversions. By the way, the metric system uses the basis of 10 for the number of fingers, but that is also not the most perfect one in all cases. For example, calculations on the sphere are easier and more precise to be done using sexagecimal system. Hanna, how easy for you would be to bake a pie for 5,400,000 milliseconds? Maybe, 5,400 kiloseconds is easier? Or 5.4 megaseconds?