Just wondering when metric eventually starts to "verse" imperial as it says in both the title bar and the headline of the forum.

Ralf

Yes, I too (long ago) noticed that.

Versus.

A minor part of the idiocy of metrication is that some literature cannot be metricated.

"He lay in a four foot box.
A foot for every year."
last stanza of 'Mid-Term Break', Seamus Heaney

Try metricating the poem mentioed above! Using metric units is not quite as easy as using imperial units for verse

There once was a system called "metric"
Not used by the common eurosceptic
To most it was hated
And certainly overrated
About as nice as a cut that's turned septic.

I'm a poet and I didn't know-it.
(Think I'll go back to bed now).

Frederick:

"He lay in a 1.2192 meter box,
30.48 centimeters for every year."

See? It's not so hard.

There was a young fellow called Peter
who learned about kilo and meter
"Pound and yard ?
Am I a retard ?
That's for old men who need a catheter!"

Hehe...

Ralf

Ralf, you're fabulous...

hehe...

Where's the other incorrect verses?

What do you mean ?
If you refer to my initial posting, it should be "versus", not "verses".

Ralf

I thought it was verses but the Word thesaurus says versus - I'd like to blame this on the Metric System but can't think of a way.

I think for this one you have to blame the english "schwa" ("uh"), since every unstressed vowel is mapped to that sound, meaning you can't tell by the sound which vowel it actually is.
That's why so many people misspell "relevant" as "relevent" for example.
British people in general seem to have less problems with it than Americans, though. But, british English has one more vowel representation than American English anyway. You have different sounds for the 'o' in "pot" and the one in "long", whereas American English uses the same sound.

Did I mention that I love linguistics ? ;)

Ralf

I don't pronounce the 'o' in "pot" and "long" the same way at all.

The former sounds similar to 'ah', and the latter is closer to 'aw' minus the 'w' sound.

Americans sometimes pronounce talk as tok and walk as wok.

Only if they're from Boston.

New Yorkers would say "tawk" and "wawk".

I pronounce the 'a' as the would be pronounced in 'aw', but without the 'w' sound.

Hmm, no counter-limerick ?
Ok, here's another one:

Tony went over to Brussels
to show off imperial muscles
"You want to buy pound ?
Here's five hundred grams round!"
said the judge, quite a bit puzzled

Cheers,
Ralf

Do all Germans find things difficuly to rhyme?

There once was a nutter called "Sam"
Who asked for 100 grammes of ham
Folks looked at the moron
And asked "Are you foreign"
So he gave him a free leg of lamb

There once was a man who used metres
And filled up his pint glasses with litres
Then in came his wife
And said "Get a life"
"Use imperial" she said "it looks neater"

Sitting in the glass-house...
"Moron" doesn't exactly rhyme with "foreign", does it?
Besides, you're breaking the meter in your limericks, ie the lines that have the same rhyme don't have the same number of beats.

Ralf

"I think for this one you have to blame the english "schwa" ("uh")"

No I think we have to blame BWMA. "Versus" isn't English, it's Latin, and even in its anglicised form it should be pronounced quite differently from "verses". It ought to be in italics too, but for that we can blame Network54's feeble software.

I'm being taught English by a German!

I was actually waiting for that line from you, Steve.

Ralf