Thread: God Save the Queen!

Originally Posted by Hanna

Another really dangerous thing is the left hand traffic in the UK.
It is both INCREDIBLY dangerous - people die every year because of this! And expensive for people who cannot continue using their car if they move between the UK and another country, because the steering wheel is on the wrong side.

I'm quite intrigued if those people cannot use cars with the steering wheel on the left in UK because of the law or they just have not used to do this with the steering wheel on the other side of the car. The question is also applied for the UK guys driving to EU: can they use their British cars in EU?

Here in Russia we have a good bunch of used cars from Japan with the steering wheel on the right. Well you'll hardly spot one in Moscow or Petersburg but moving to the East over the Ural mountains its number is about 50 percent (Novosibirsk including) and rise to 90 persent for "Far East" like Vladivostok.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Well, metric is based on 10 which makes it so much easier than Imperial.
I have tried to bake according to Imperial and it's really hard!

In the UK there was BIG fight because there was an EU legislation that was literally forcing the UK to start using metric in shops, for selling meat, cheese etc.

People were so angry. One grocer were actually sentenced to prison (not long, just a few weeks) because he refused to make the switch. People from all of England drove to his shop to to buy their groceries to show their support, so he made lots of money from it. He became a sort of anti-EU hero in the evening papers.

I thought it was brilliant because I was literally incapable of learning Imperial and suddenly I could say "Give me 500 gram of that" etc. Previously I had to guess at Imperial.

The shop staff was totally confused and did not know for example "hecto" or "decimetre" even though they are normal metric measurements. Everything had to be given in the most basic units that were on the actual scales or ruler, or they were confused.
Rather funny for me and all the French and German expats in the area were I lived.

Then suddenly they changed back.. Imperial became allowed again, but the good thing was that you could continue use gram if you wanted and as a result I never used metric.

The problem in the UK is that there are about three generations of adults who were educated after the introduction of metric and so don't really understand imperial, but social inertia has prevented metric from being taken up across-the-board, so we've ended up with an odd muddle where, for example, we buy fuel in litres, but describe fuel economy in terms of miles-per-gallon.

The result is that many people, such as me, don't really understand either system particularly well and treat all units of measurement as arbitrary labels.

British TV news always give temperatures in both Celsius and Fahrenheit. I have no idea why they can't make up their minds and my vote is obviously on Celsius even though I have a basic idea of Fahrenheit by now.

This hasn't been true for years. It might be the case that presenters occasionally mention fahrenheit during broadcasts, but they don't routinely display the temperature that way any more. The Weather page on the BBC site doesn't even give you the option to view temperatures in F.

Another really dangerous thing is the left hand traffic in the UK.
It is both INCREDIBLY dangerous - people die every year because of this! And expensive for people who cannot continue using their car if they move between the UK and another country, because the steering wheel is on the wrong side.

Sorry, but what are you talking about? Dangerous for whom? Who dies? The only people who have a problem with driving on the left are those driving unsuitable cars, and those more used to driving on the right, both of which are true no matter which side you're talking about.

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 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?

To these women, I strongly recommend this site: The Metric Kitchen -- it includes a rather detailed table of cup/gram equivalents for non-liquid ingredients. 1 cup of flour = 120 g, 1 cup of white sugar = 200 g, 1 cup of butter = 240 g.

Thanks you! I'll save it, just in case.
I remember trying to find out once what a cup was, different sites gave different sizes.

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

I'd say "Despite being small, zolotnik is valuable" (zolotniks were used to measure gold, and later there were small gold coins under the same name )

There's an almost forgotten continuation to this saying: "Мал золотник. да дорог, велика Федора, да дура" (Zolotnik is small, but precious, Fedora is big, but foolish), so initially it could have meant something like "Don't judge a book by its cover", but now it's closer to your interpretation.

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

"Don't judge a book by its cover"

I agree with that interpretation, it's very close.