Dear Gustaf, I have interspersed some comments. on 02.12.2000 03.02, Gustaf Sj�berg at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Pat Naughtin wrote: > >> on 31.10.2000 02.27, Howard Ressel at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> >> Dear Howard and All, >> >> I received a call a few moments ago to say that an article of mine in a >> national editorial journal 'Stylewise', had been taken up by the Brisbane >> Courier-Mail. >> > > <snip> > > interesting! > > I have some questions about Australia and metric: > > When were speedlimits changed and was it done in an overnight-manner? During the early part of 1975 signs were erected all over the country with the hard metric speed limits and the hard metric distances, and, as soon as they were built, all these signs were covered. On a planned date - I seem to recall it was a Sunday in mid winter - all of the covers were removed and on the following days the old imperial signs were taken away. The whole operation probably took a year, but it all seemed to happen on one day. Within a month or so almost all Australians had accepted the new system. > How do you say km/h? K per hour? This varies widely from person to person and on the formality of the occasion. You might here the full expression 'kilometres per hour', the shortened form 'kilometres', or the abbreviated form 'kays'; but none of these have an absolute preference. > Is the word "klick" used for km in everyday speech? (I read about > "klicksticks".) No this is not common. It seems to me that this term originated in rural areas and while you might here it in a city it seems to be regarded as having a sort of country hick feel about it. > What other pet-names or quasi-metric units are used? Do you have 50 cL metric > pints? No, the pints - as in a pint of milk for example - was converted to 600 mL and these are still available along with 1 L, 2 L and 4 L containers. Beer in other nations has been a strong repository of the word pint, but here the pint has been commonly used in only one state, New South Wales. Other states, and in NSW for other sizes glasses of beer, have always had pet names that have little meaning outside Australia. Some of the beer glasses are called butcher, glass, pot, pony, and schooner; these have a fixed size within any one state but the size can vary widely as soon as you cross a state border. For take away containers the bottles and cans of beer are called cans, tinnies, stubbies, or Darwin stubbies. The Darwin stubby is notable in that it holds a little over 2.2 litres of beer. > Are mL used exclusively? Yes, for all soft drinks, beer, spirits, milk and so on. For larger volumes and capacities, refrigerators are measured in litres (L), and water storages are measured in kilolitres (kL), megalitres (ML), and gigalitres (GL). In contrast to this, building volumes are measured in cubic metres (m3) for air conditioning calculations. Cheers, Pat Naughtin CAMS Geelong, Australia
