Oolite Bulletins

Diziet Sma wrote:

Hehehe.. you think that's bad..

One of the nice things (for westerners) about the Philippines is that most of the people speak/understand English. However, local usage of some terms has shifted considerably from what most English speakers would expect.

For instance, imagine you begin working in a company there, and a work colleague invites you to his home for a meal. You have a wonderful meal, and a very enjoyable evening with his family. As you depart, you thank him, and remark that his wife is an excellent hostess, and that his daughter seems a bit of a tomboy. His manner suddenly gets a lot colder, and you wonder why.

Congratulations! You just called his wife a prostitute, and his daughter a lesbian!

- talk about needing an English to English translation book .

This milliard/billion issue is actually one of the very few instances where I see more coherence in the Anglo (?) way.
(I was told it is typically US-American, but that English (UK) tend to use the milliard scheme ?)

I see more coherence in it mainly because it keeps the "times 1000 makes a new name" rule.
That rule is there in the micro-direction : single, mili, micro, ...
It is also there in the macro direction up to million : singles, thousands, millions

I see no reason to suddenly change the scheme from 1000-x-millions on.

Maybe there could be an exchange - we continentals start using the "US"-billion et al, "they" start with using at least °C. Or Kelvin, if they must.
But not a temperature scale that is based on what some German measured how cold it was that day in his village on the one hand, and what he found in his armpit on the other hand*.

* now I wonder do I still have my copy of The Meaning of Liff or is it one of those books that I lent to so., now vanished ?

snork wrote:

Maybe there could be an exchange - we continentals start using the "US"-billion et al, "they" start with using at least °C. Or Kelvin, if they must.
But not a temperature scale that is based on what some German measured how cold it was that day in his village on the one hand, and what he found in his armpit on the other hand*.

Hilarious This yank has been using °C for about a year now, and has gotten quite used to it (now if the rest of the country were to follow suit, that would be miraculous ).