Erik Moeller wrote:
Tim-
[en]
I just want to go on the record saying this: Esperanto sucks!
I will go on the record saying this: There is a world language, and its
name is English. Can we please stick to it in conversations? It has the
additional advantage that it keeps the French out.
In return, it would be nice if Americans could finally adopt the metric
system.
We'll adopt the metric system as soon as the British do, which is to say
you'll probably be waiting a while. =D
(This means not having speed limits in miles/hour, beer in pints, and
peoples' weights on the BBC News in stones).
On a mildly more on-topic note, there was some discussion earlier of
some sort of automatic translation of units based on user preferences
(kg/lbs, degrees F / degrees C, mi/km, etc.). Did anything ever come of
that? Despite the obvious convenience of using metric as a standard,
currently a fairly large percentage of English speakers would have to
convert the units to make sense of them (the ~300 million Americans form
a fairly decent percentage of English speakers), so using the old
"standard" units for them makes some sense.
-Mark