Paul Trusten
On Nov 13, 2009, at 10:07, Bill Hooper <[email protected]> wrote:
I returned from a trip to Ireland recently and made a few
observations about metric use there.
I was not impressed with the Irish support of metric.
It is true that most of the highway signs were in metric and
gasoline was sold by the litre. However, highway signs, even
official ones, sometimes used incorrect symbols (e.g., "KM" for
kilometres). Non-official signs showed that common people could and
would use metric in their postings, but privately, most people still
used a lot of YOE* and saw no particular reason to try to replace
them with metric. There was considerably more interest in making
sure that signs were in the Irish language. (It is required that all
official signs be dual, English and Irish, in most of the country,
and IRISH ONLY in certain parts of the country that are recognized
to be predominantly Irish speaking.)
Packaged things in grocery stores seemed to be almost all in metric
but I did not have much opportunity to study them.
These are off the cuff observations and I don't pretend to know
whether they represent the typical situation.
Regards,
Bill Hooper
-----------------------------------------------------
* YOE = "Ye Olde English" units
Humor me! I still like "Ye Olde English units" as a description.
Someone recently suggested to me that abbreviating it as "YOE"
seemed good.
==============================
If you have not already done so,
please note my new email address:
[email protected]
(Old address will still work OK temporarily.)
