It’s often been said that us British and our American cousins are ‘separated by a common language.’
I was once doing a spot of night fishing on Pensacola Beach, staring out into the Gulf of Mexico, when a pleasant enough chap inquired as to whether I’d caught anything as he was strolling along. I simply replied “Not a sausage, mate,” expecting him not to break stride and maybe throw out a little chuckle. Little did I know he would dig his heels in and do an about turn so swift that it made him appear like Michael Jackson circa Thriller. I could tell the poor guy was a touch confused and it took me ten minutes to explain that I wasn’t using chippolatas instead of maggots for bait.
From then on I decided to be relatively straightforward in my approach. It’s not that Americans are daft, I just find you get a bit further if you say what you mean.
But we aren’t just perverted by language, we also have slightly different systems of measurement. It’s bad enough working between metric and imperial in the UK, but America seems to have kept hold of ‘soft metric’ as opposed to ‘hard metric’ when converting from imperial.
But I can sleep a little easier now I’ve come across the . Of particular interest to sheet metal fabricators is a and a .
But it doesn’t stop there. There’s the , which measures coma levels as opposed to Scottish reaction to single malt whisky. There’s also a whole host of other weird and wonderful measurement scales.
But I personally might have a spot of bother with the Growler. In America it’s ‘a container of beer designed for carryout. In the U.S., a growler generally holds 1/2 gallon (about 1.89 liters).’ However, in certain parts of Lancashire, it’s the unit of measurement relating to dodgy meat pies.
Thing is, I've got to get my head round all the various measurements etc. as I'm moving to America and will have to organise things that have been made in England to be fabricated in America. Should be rather entertaining.
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