I had always been told that an "ass" was some kind of second grade donkey,

and an "Arse" is something the toothless one speaks from with very bad breath,

but then again how do you get "Fanny " to relate to the same meaning as "Arse" ?

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Enjoy yourself!
Enjoy me!

Behind me is a Woman rolling her eye's!

The only opinion about me that matters is the one I have of myself

dice 45

with the 1 mil, it is 1/1000 of a metre not an inch, unless your talking fluid, which it is then 1/1000 of a litre

but your right with the 1 micron

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Enjoy yourself!
Enjoy me!

Behind me is a Woman rolling her eye's!

The only opinion about me that matters is the one I have of myself

LOL scotz.....The Pa. Dutch outen the lite............and if you have your picture taken and it is a good shot........they say "The photo got good".........omggggg..........Someone take me away from all of this!!!!

When a storm is coming over the mountains....."Well now...looks like we are in fer a dunner wedder".

I am told that this is a slang form of "High German" and the Schwenkfelders and Mennonites have bastardized it so that the dialect differs as you get further and further north or west. Which means to me that the Pa. Dutch can't even understand each other depending on where they are from! ROFLMAO! And imagine the poor Amish. They must go nuts trying to communicate with the Pa. Dutch!

Yamma Yea Faddump.........I am still working on that one! LOL!!

Mrs. Lix

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VENI, VEDI, VELCRO (I came, I saw, I stuck around)!

Bilbo,
actually in the US 1 mil = .001 inches

we also use millimeter for 1/1000 of a meter (notice that even the spelling of that unit of measure varies) as most other places... but in the States, when you say "one mil" you get "1/1000th of an inch".

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-Toast-
"It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit - but none to be offended by them." -- Johnny Hart ("BC", cartoonist, 2000)
"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog: Nobody really enjoys it and the frog generally dies as a result." -- E. B. White

"tis a fine barn, english, but tis no pool."

"d'oh-eth!"

And some of our differences are very funny and interesting too.
My VERY limited understanding of my native and sole language is that it’s one of the few that arranges the verb and subjects in the order we do. I have to defer this topic to one of our wizard (black magic ) linguists like SugarFreeCandy for any reliable information.

I can share my limited insight with GermanSteve & Dice45 regarding the “names” of numbers. My grasp of the past is that it is not an American / European difference, but a German AND Great Britain / French AND American usage of the “names” of numeric magnitude. We all know and accept that language is a convention and illogical evolution of human verbal sounds. Fortunately mathematics isn’t .
Now we Americans should have some sort of award for STUPID CHOICES as we did decide to use the French verbal notation (instead of their METRIC SYSTEM of functional, quantifying measurements that the whole frigging planet uses, instead of the dysfunctional, cumbersome, senseless system that even the inventors have all but discarded!! (do I have a prejudice:mad).

As this forum does not lend itself to exponentual notation I want to thank Dice45 for his inventiveness. [and I will be happy to share the back-assward way we state thread pitches if you care to PM me]

So here’s what little I know -
We seem to all be together on ones, tens, hundreds etc., up to millions, ten to the sixth power (10^6). After this, it becomes a “pick-a-name-out-your-ass-contest”. For G&GB it’s (10^9)=milliard, (10^12)=billion, (10^15)=billiard, (10^18)=trillion, (10^21)=trilliard. Now for us dumb-shit F&A it’s (10^9)=billion, (10^12)=trillion! That’s it:whiteghos! That’s all we officially have! We do use the arbitrary term “zillion” and “quadzillion” (?4?) to indicate a whole shit pot full, but it really has no known or agreed value. So there!

Now would one of our sweet Pixieites let me up under her skirt to that silky wet spot before I go nuts thinking about this stuff?

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What's the problem with our system, PF? All it did was cost NASA a multi-million $ Mars lander, & embarrass US in front of the whole world...

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Plug me into somethin'

If the theory does not conform to the facts, then the facts must be discarded.

No good deed ever goes unpunished

Never argue with an idiot. He'll drag you down to his level, & beat you with experience.

That doesn’t even count!
What we spend in calculations, conversions and errors E V E R Y D A Y could pay off the national debt in two years.



Ask me sometime about the WHOLE worlds “address” system and what it costs every hour of everyday !

(Irish, OldFart, will somebody take this soapbox away? …………… PLEASE!)

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well since they seem to not want to use the SI units, I think it's NASA's own dumb fault for the wasted money and embarrassments

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"I am so smart! S-M-R-T!" - Homer Simpson

The sun is gone, but I have a light - Kurt Cobain

~I love Nikki~

Legend, don't pound in the message.

Lixnlix69, think of the German "Donnerwetter".

As Bilbo said, a Fanny in the US is a bum, with us it's a Vagina.

Ass has it's derivation, I think, in the puritanic 1890's.

PF, you hired the box for a week, you're stuck with it.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

that I find that system FAR superior to anything commonly used here and totally agree with you. Standards International is just what it says and when the shortsighted, ignorant, egotistical bureaucrats and moguls that run this country get their heads out of their ass, it may change. [FAT CHANCE]
The only thing they saw in 1970 was that it was politically unpopular (only because of being unfamiliar), and would cost a few dollars from the top of their piles, when it was legislated and passed that the US WOULD adapt the metric system. They couldn’t see past the complacent heaps to note the hole in the bottom of their pockets that was being created. This attitude did become apparent from the other end as the global evolution enveloped our industrial might.:redghost:
Had this happened, today an inch, a quart (?is that dry measure or wet?) and a 16 ounce pound would be a curiosity like the spittoon.
As long as they squeeze their dollars until George shits in their pocket, they deserve what they get and somebody else WILL eat their lunch.

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Australia used to have the old british system of measurement. In my life time I have been through currency change from pounds shilling and pence to the decimal system of dollars and cents. It is a whole lot easier doing things in 10's than 12's.

Then we went from imperial measurements to metric. It is hard getting your head around it at first but it is so much easier to measure something like 355mm than say 1 foot 5 and 3/16ths of an inch. There is a significant cost factor to it and that is why the US baulked at it I think. But now they are out of step with the rest of the world. Canada is metric maybe they are not as backward as the country south of them reckons.

The farenhieght scale for temperature is so bloody ridiculous. Fancy starting at 32 for freezing point and having 212 for boiling point. The celsius scale of 0 for freezing and 100 for boiling (point of water ) is much more logical.

Talking of a mixture, I once worked on Italian Macchi Jet trainers which were powered by a Bristol Siddley Viper engine of british manufacure. All the airfame nuts bolts and screws were metric and the engine had british threads and imperial measure nuts and bolts. Of course america has its own thread system and never the twain shall meet lol. But the most interesting thing was the Macchi maintenance manual. It was orginally produced in Italian of course and the engine manual was in english but got translated into Italian. when Australia bought the Macchi the manuals all got translated to English. The engine manual was a pretty funny book as it was translated from english to Italian and then back to English. We eventually got the originals from Bristol Siddley and it was very funny comparing them.

I did see something about an 'Outing' in an earlier post. To me that means going out somewhere for a picnic or a day in the country. To be outed is to be declared a homosexual publicly.
English is such a strange lanuage and with americans, Canadians, Australians and the like stuffing around with it, it makes it even more strange LOL.

Keep the differences coming in, I am enjoying this thread.

a few more i remember: tyre/tire cheque/check boot/trunk

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"I am so smart! S-M-R-T!" - Homer Simpson

The sun is gone, but I have a light - Kurt Cobain

~I love Nikki~

Hmmm...you want dialect?...LOL... Don't make me get out the Redneck/English dictionary...

Hmm.

Speaking as a Canuck...

I totally agree that Metric makes more sense than Imperial, and I can't for the life of me do calculations beyond the most basic in Imperial.

That said... Things here aren't all that clear-cut.

I couldn't tell you how much I weigh or how tall I am in Metric (even if I were willing to divulge that top-secret information ) --- I've always been measured in feet and inches and pounds. I cook in cups and teaspoons and tablespoons, at Fahrenheit temperatures --- but have no clue about pints and quarts (except when it comes to beer and berries, respectively). I measure the temperature outside in Celsius degrees; I drive distances measured in kilometres; I know my own weight in pounds but weigh my cat and dog in Metric... For tangible distances, I'm equally at home with inches or centimetres, but if it's less than a finger-width in size or more than a half-dozen paces, I have to measure in Metric. Confused yet? (I am!)

Now let's bring in the language issue. I lived in the South-West of England for a year when I was younger, and made the mistake once of asking a friend "Should I wear this vest with these pants?" --- those of you in North America know that I was talking about a sleeveless garment that buttons over a shirt, and an ankle-length two-legged garment. However, to my friend in Somerset, I had just asked if I ought to wear a particular undershirt with a particular pair of underwear... (NOT a mistake I made again in a hurry!! )

That's just the most glaring (and most embarrassing!!) example. There were a huge number of differences, mostly minor, but some more major. Another example that I STILL get teased about is a little difference that I somehow brought back with me when I came back to Canada: I say, as my English friends do, that "I'm meant to do this" meaning that I'm supposed to do it --- my friends here think that I'm speaking in the sense of ultimate destiny when I talk like that, whereas I really only mean to say that it's an assignment for school or work...

We Canucks have our own weird linguistic goings-on too, eh? Check this out: it's a Canadian glossary... And I'd just like to take this opportunity to point out that we in Canada do NOT say "oot" or "hoos" (for "out" and "house") --- it's just that Americans say "awt" and "haws"!

Gee, I'm sorry, PF, I seem to have stolen that soap-box from you, and right after you'd paid for the rental too... Maybe if I hike up my skirt a little while I stand up here pontificating, you'll forgive me?

--- sweetstuff (who has obviously not posted at Pixies' in far too long and is now in the throes of absolute Pixtasy form suddenly making such a lengthy post... Ahhhh, that feels goooood! )

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"You can't test courage cautiously." --- Annie Dillard