Re: CHAT: browsers

John Cowan wrote:
> Tristan scripsit:
>
>>If there's one US spelling I can't stand (and there is), it's 'liter'. I
>>always read it as 'lighter'.
>
> ObDialect: Pity the poor Ozzie in America.  Every time he asks for his coffee
> at the end of the meal, it promptly comes back with more cream in it!
Why's that? Or, what do you mean? The only thing I can get in that is
the fact that you call milk 'cream' when you put it in coffee. And it's
spelt 'Aussie'. It's pronounced the same way you'd say 'Ozzie', but it's
most definitely spelt 'Aussie', being derived as it is from
'Australia(n)', not 'Oz'. (Pity the poor American in Oz, who gets a lump
of cream in the bottom of their coffee.)

Apparently, while at a German immigrant's house, my sister confused her
host by asking for white tea. Apparently the Germans call (once
translated) tea 'black tea' and white tea 'black tea with milk in it'.
(Recently, Lipton has decided to rename their tea to Lipton Black Tea.
Lipton just want to be confusing. They also have 330 mL cans of iced tea
(being something more like cold, fizzy tea, which sounds, and is,
absolutely disgusting). Oh, and Americans call chilled (perhaps with ice
in it) coffee 'iced coffee', whereas in Australia, iced coffee actually
has things like cream (real cream, not milk) and icecream in it. The
things Starbucks'll teach ya.

>>Yeah, I am well aware of the fact that you can measure things in either
>>litres or grams without regard to whether they're solid or liquid. I'm
>>just wondering if fluid ounzes are used to measure fluids (by
>>convention) or if it's just a name.
>
> Mostly it's just a name for a certain volume, but it wouldn't be used for
> anything that can't be densely packed, as I mentioned in my previous note.
So you're just confusing us then ;) Good-o, continue as you were.

> ObLang: this word "gallon", which is the basic unit in Imperial and U.S.
> Customary systems, is Norman French (did you ever hear galon/jalon there,
> Christophe?), and probably of Celtic origin before that, or at least it
> has no obvious Latin etymology.
We steal our names for the old measurements off them, then they go round
and change them behind our backs and we have to convert again. Except
some countries decide to start converting, so Australia completely
converts (extremely effectively*), but then they don't really...

*Apparently the speed limits were all changed over in practically one
night---and if before metrication they had all the indication of
measurement as they do after (that is, none), they'd have to have for it
to have been even remotely safe. (The before and after designs are
apparently extremely similar: big black number in red circle on white
background.) Rule no. 1 of converting: just do it. I guess Nike don't
exist in England.

Tristan.

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