32 points

And yet they still use king George’s foot as a unit of measurement, curious.

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10 points
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6 points

A foot is defined as 0,3048 meter. They use the metric system, but with a conversion.

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3 points

Miles, feet, and inches are all base 12 - just saying.

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2 points

It would be awesome to have a base-12 number system paired with a base-12 measurement system. It’s just so much nicer to deal with than metric or imperial. So many measurements would become much easier. Take length. You could have the base measurement be equal to a meter, then use 1/3 meter sticks as roughly equivalent to a 1 foot ruler.

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27 points

I always want to pronounce the American versions of these words phonetically when I see them.

And what the heck is going on with the US pronunciation of “buoy”? None of those syllables are in that word.

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20 points
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Buo-y

Apparently we have the Dutch to blame for that one, as the verb form is apparently descended from Spanish.

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8 points

I still don’t understand the English insistence on borrowing words from other languages, yet refusal to standardize spelling into ways that actually make sense within the language.

So I still blame English for being silly with their transliteration.

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10 points

Blame the great vowel shift.

But also, English spelling can’t standardize because English pronunciation isn’t standard. West Coast vs Midwest vs South vs East Coast have vastly different accents. Any spelling reform that makes English phonetic for one would be wrong for the others.

And it keeps changing! People keep moving and interacting with other languages, adding and dropping words and accents over time.

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6 points

Blame the French actually, they invaded and screwed everything up beyond repair.

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1 point

ʤəst stɑːt ˈjuːzɪŋ aɪ-piː-eɪ

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10 points

Do it backwards, pronounce the British versions

  • Cull our
  • Hume our
  • Flave our
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21 points

Simplified English vs Traditional English

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18 points

It’s not even that. At the time they split, English wasn’t as standardized. You can see it looking back in the Lewis and Clark expedition journals written by Meriwether Lewis. He doesn’t even have consistency in his own writing, and he was no country bumpkin.

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20 points

I mean we already got rid of T.

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8 points

You mean we the Bri’ish?

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2 points

I see what you did there

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1 point

The good ol’ glottal stop.

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17 points

Check the Declaration of Independence. You’ll find the ‘u’. Noah Webster was a dick.

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8 points

The Declaration was pre standard. It sure was a political decision to land on another standard than the Bri*ish

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Memes

!memes@lemmy.ml

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