It would be difficult to make one standard spelling of unit names in English. I think that British English and American English differ as much from each other as Imperial and United States Customary do. In fact, claims are being made that both versions of English are diverging more and more.
Han ----- Original Message ----- From: "kilopascal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, 2002-08-09 5:46 Subject: [USMA:21592] RE: Digital TV : Opposition to US gov > 2002-08-08 > > I guess even if SI does not specify spelling, there should be consistency > within a language. How many other languages that you know of will spell the same word two different ways depending on what region you live in? And I'm not referring to languages like Serbo-Croatian. Where the only difference is that being the same language, the Serbs write with the Cyrillic alphabet and the Croats with the Roman. There should be one spelling standard for English, at least as far as SI is concerned. Can you imagine trying to explain to Americans that SI is still consistent even if the main units of litre and metre are spelled differently within the same language? If I was a member of the BWMA I would exploit this situation. john ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Potts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, 2002-08-08 20:21 Subject: [USMA:21589] RE: Digital TV : Opposition to US gov Brij Bhushan Vij wrote: They advocate the SI-metric policies but refuse to change even the spellings of > 'meter and liter" to Syst�me International d'unit�s (SI in all languages). Great thinking, I must profess! Brij: SI does not specify spelling for all languages. The US spelling is in line with the German, Dutch and Scandinavian spellings (and others). Italy, Spain and Portugal don't spell them litre and metre. Many other languages have non-Roman alphabets (Greek, Cyrillic, Thai, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, etc.). > > As far as SI is concerned, it's the symbols and prefixes that matter. However, even there, other alphabets must be considered. Bill Potts, CMS Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator]
