"Ye" is the old English word for "you", not "the"; in old English they
had an extra letter which looked a bit like a y but was not a y, but a
th, thus the word was "the" in all old English texts, never "ye".
David
Bill Hooper wrote:
On 2004 Jul 16 , at 11:35 AM, Paul Trusten wrote:
Just
thought I'd write that I like your "Ye Olde English Units" phrase.
Thanks. I've used it a lot myself and have tried to "promote" it a
little bit, but the phrase has not attracted much support.
I like it because (even though not totally accurate, as some have
pointed out), the phrase "Ye Olde English units" is reasonable clear
to most Americans (who would probably just call them "English units")
yet at the same time carries just a little of a deprecatory tone by
making it sound somewhat old fashioned.
(I guess another term would be "the old fashioned English units".)
If one abbreviated "Ye Olde English Units" to "YOEU", I think it would
lose it's recognizableness to the average person. Similarly, I think
the current fad of calling them "FFU" is even more lost on the
American public because they have no idea what "FFU" stands for, not
would they understand it much better if you told them it meant "Fred
Flintstone units". So when the term "FFU" is used, it IS NOT
recognized or understood, except by the few of us specialists who know
that it means the non-metric, non-SI units formerly used by the
English and inherited in modified form by the Americans. I think "Ye
Olde English units" IS so recognized by most Americans (at least).
Anyway, someday maybe some single way of describing the old units will
become universally accepted. Let's hope that the reference that wins
out will be "the units we used to use".
Regards,
Bill Hooper
Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Go Metric, America !
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PS Instead of "Ye Old English units", I often refer to the entire set
as "Ye Olde Englsih mixture". I used to call it "Ye Olde English
System" until someone pointed out that it is not much of a "system"
but more of a hodge-podge mixture of originally unrelated units.
Now THERE is a neat name for it: "Ye Olde English Hodge Podge". :-)
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