Re: Accents

En réponse à Tristan Alexander McLeay <anstouh@...>:

>
> Why is it that other countries have so much trouble converting? (Okay,
> people will give people's heights in feet and inches in Oz, but that's
> the
> only thing left, really.) I've heard tell that the Dutch use pfund(?)
> for
> half a kilo...
Dutch people are not Germans (in fact, it's nearly the worst you can call them)
and never have affrication of their initial stops (nor fricativisation of
medial stops, making Dutch look more like English than German). So the word
is 'pond'. And indeed, it refers to exactly half a kilo. There is also the less
used 'ons': "ounce" referring to exactly 100 grams. Though unofficial they
refer at least to simple fractions of the metric system, which is quite helpful
for people like me who never had anything else than pure metric system :))) .

>
> Only times you see that is on American imports and M&Ms (42.1 g or
> something like that for the crunchy M&Ms). I've seen things as 500 mL
> netto/<equiv. in fluid ounzes> net... (Why is it that Australians have
> to
> understand the Italian/Spanish word for `net'?)
>
He he, they use the word 'netto' in Holland too, and it refers also to the
actual salary received by the employee, after taxes were paid.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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