Part the sixth—Numbers

[cosmolinguist]

If it involves numbers, it's probably not the same in the UK.

Okay, maybe that's not quite true. But it feels true.

My jeans from a mall in Minnesota are a size 12, my jeans from Asda in England are size 14, and they're a bit smaller. My sandals from Wal-Mart are size 9½, my Pumas from England say 6½. (Luckily, that sort of thing isn't much of a problem because I have no money to buy shoes or clothes, even if I wanted them.)

Of course the money is different, but there, as I've said, the numbers seem about the same, much of the time. So that doesn't bother me (except when I remember that I'm spending about twice as much money as it seems like I am).

I looked at a weather map on TV a couple of days ago and was horrified to learn that it was only about 10 degrees everywhere. I realized, of course, that those tempeatures were in Celsius, but it still frightened me a bit at first. I'm used to numbers throwing me off and confusing me here.

10°C still isn't enough! I feel cheated out of my summer!

Gas (or petrol, yes, I can speak British) is indecipherable to me, though, because it's measured in pence per liter (or "litre," I suppose), and my brain just can't deal with that sort of thing at all. I know it's about 80 pence a liter, and I've been told that's four times as much as gas costs in the states.

House numbers are different here, as I explained to Andrew. I told him that the blocks are counted from some arbitrary starting point, and you can tell how many blocks away some house is from that by the first digit or two of the number. The rest of it will tell you how far down that block it is, and which side of the street it's on. But here, houses are just numbered. They could hardly do otherwise, since they don't really have "blocks" in England. The streets are at uneven distances and crazy angles, so there aren't nice sensible squares like I'm used to.

Also, there's the matter of floors. In the US, when you go into a building, you're probably on the first floor. Sure, some will hide the first floor underneath you, but mostly you're okay and it all makes sense. In England, you have to go up a floor to get to the first floor! The one you think should be the first floor is called "ground level," I think, and after that they're numbered first, second, third floor, whatever. Silliness.

Maybe I should just be glad that they use familiar numerals and base 10 ...

Comments

[tenbaset.livejournal.com]

Ahh yes, try living in a country where we get both UK and US sized clothing.

(Although, of course, because we get both, we know which is which, and conversion charts feature in many clothing stores.) But, being a guy, it's just XL to me anyway. :)

What? If our summer was a mere 10 deg C, I'd feel cheated too! Yikes! We're in the opposite hemisphere, and it's 12 degrees C.

And, yes, petrol/gas is much cheaper in the USA. We listen not to americans complaining about petrol prices.

Although I always did find it easier to figure out American cities when I'd 'just landed' in them. (Avenues often run perpendicular to streets, and the block number being encoded in the house number as you mention, and the notion of 'quadrants' (Suffix'd compass directions.))

[cosmolinguist]

I was impressed with Andrew's mom, who bought me a top and jeans when I needed some; she asked me what size clothes I wear and all I could do was shrug because I could tell her the US size but had no idea what it'd be here. She did well, though, and the clothes fit me. Must me a mom thing. (That's how I know the jeans are a different size here, actually—it's not like I'd want to go shopping myself!)

There were times in the summer when it was warmer than 10 (yes, were, summer is decidedly over now in northern England), but not a lot. :-) Nothing like I'm used to in Minnesota, where it's hot and humid for about five months of the year. (Of course, it's snowy and windy for six of the other months—that leaves about a week each for autumn and spring, which sounds about right.

[tenbaset.livejournal.com]

Yes - mothers are amazing. :-) Things are also different in (conentential) Europe. They tend to just measure things in centimeters there. Mind you, that's the sort of thing they'd do, really.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

I was in The 'Delphia and they had that US system of block numbering. That's just hellishly confusing! You have no way of knowing how far away something is from something else. A block could be 10m or it could be 150m, there's no way to tell. At least with consecutive numbering, I know more or less precisely how far something is from where I am.

Of course, in England, some streets go by alternate numbering (ie odds on one side, evens on the other, and other streets go by a numbering system I've not yet named, where they count up on one side, and then when they get to the end of the street, the flip sides, and continue counting the other way).

10°C still isn't enough! I feel cheated out of my summer!

Ahh, gotta love those british summers! ;)

80 pence a litre? This is why North Americans should stop whining about fuel prices. Its about 75 cents a litre over here.

And one other thing. Floors. In North America, the ground floor, and the 1st floor are one and the same. In Britain, the 1st floor is 12 feet above the ground, and is the second floor that you're likely to put your feet on.

[cosmolinguist]

There's kind of a standard for city block sizes ...

Cities in the United States tend to be laid out in grids that measure 1/16 mile by 1/8 mile, with major streets at quarter-mile, half-mile, or one-mile intervals. "In many large eastern cities, a city block is a standard 1/20 of a mile," the Web site stated. "That is, there is that much space between the center lines of the streets in grid-platted parts of the city."

Of course, the source for that is actually an article stating that there is no standard for them. So, grain of salt, etc., but I've never thought it to be that big a deal—probably just because I've grown up with that notion of a block, admittedly.

I added something about floors, too, now that you reminded me.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

That discription lists about a half-dezen different possible sizes for a block.

And you think that that isn't more confusing then simply knowing how many lots are between you and the place you're going?

weird.

[cosmolinguist]

I know it does, but they're not usually all jumbled together. The block next to the one you can see probably looks pretty much like that. They're fairly standard within, if not cities, at least areas of cities.

[hilker.livejournal.com]

If I had to guess, I’d say the nameless numbering system you mention is for the convenience of postal workers. In the US, “dismount delivery’ is common. The letter carrier parks his or her vehicle at one end of the block, walks up one side of the street making deliveries, then down the other side, then drives to the next block on his or her route. But you said the end of the street, not the end of the block, so this probably has nothing to do with it, come to think of it.

[dawgdays.livejournal.com]

10°C? 50°F? Yep, I'd feel cheated out of my summer too.

At least you don't have to deal with the house numbering I encountered on the Isle of Lewis. In Coll (one of the villages) it seems that the houses are numbered in the order they're built. We were trying to find 41 Upper Coll. It was about a half mile away from 30-something, and very close to 20-something, but a ways away from 20-something-else.

By the way, while we were on Lewis, they had a "real scorcher". It was maybe 24°C.

[cosmolinguist]

I think I heard about that kind of house numbering from one of my professors, who'd been on sabbatical in England the year before I had a couple of classes with her.

Anything in the high-teens, Celsiusly speaking, is called a heatwave. These people are crazy.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

Hey, at least most streets don't go like hta tone described by Dave Gorman.

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

1) Also, the British litre is a slightly different size from the American litre.

2) Have you noticed yet that there are very few street signs that let you know which road you're turning on to? And also, the road signs tell you that you can turn toward "Obscureville" or "Neverheardofittown" instead of letting you choose, for example "east" or "west." Which is ok if you have a sense of direction or an excellent map, but if you don't, you're screwed.

3) Even cool summers feel pretty hot in a country where people refuse to accept air conditioning into their lives. You might not notice so much being from the Great Up-North, but coming from the South, I want my air conditioning, dammit.

3a) Also, every summer there's a "OMG UNEXPECTED HEAT WAVE WE'RE ALL SWELTERING WHO KNEW!!??!?!?!!111" and every winter there's a "OMG UNEXPECTED ICE AND SNOW HOW CAN WE BE EXPECTED TO HAVE ADEQUATE ROAD CLEARING SERVICES??!?!?!!!?!1111" Prepare to have an almost overwhelming desire to bitch-slap everyone who can't possibly drive sensibly because there's one snowflake, as well as those who take the opposite stance and decide that driving on ice is an excellent idea.

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

I do apologize for my sub-standard punctuation and grammar in that post. It's just that reading about your experiences here brings back all of the old frustrations that I had.

I was totally at sea for ages.

[cosmolinguist]

Everybody's allowed substandard grammar and punctuation when talking about morons. :-)

[cosmolinguist]

Coming from a state that gets both very hot and very cold, I see what you mean about 3a) ... though one of the things Minnesotans pride themselves on is dealing with the weather. Weather is a big beast with claws and pointy teeth for us, so we like to be nonchalant about it.

And I've felt quite arrogant in that, when Andrew or other people around here are inert due to overheating, I'm more or less fine. I do realize that the A/C makes a difference. And I did miss it a bit, but I've lived in college-kid places that had none and that were sweltering for more than a few days a summer, so this summer was nothing.

Obviously I've not been around for an English winter but I do know the way that Minnesotans laugh at places like Kentucky, which get an inch of snow every three years but, when that inch shows up, school's closed and no one can get anywhere.

Yet, at the same time, there are Minnesotans who have driven on ice half the year for as long as they've been driving yet never get used to it and complain just as much as people who've never seen snow. And they're worse, really, because they should know better! So I know about the desire to slap people until they shut up.

But it's nice to know I have that to look forward to. ;-)

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

Am American Litre???

Are you sure you don't mean a US Pint and a UK Pint?

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

Oooops, I meant the US gallon is different from the UK gallon, which is helpful to know if you are trying to work out the actual gas/petrol price difference to the penny. One US gallon is 0.8327 UK gallon.

You are, of course, quite right that the pints are different too.

[gentleman-lech.livejournal.com]

It's not just Britain that does the whole ground floor vs. first floor thing. It's all of Europe. I got used to seeing elevators marked G-1-2-3 when I was in Germany. It was sort of weird not being able to get to "ground" level when I came back here. :)