How metric are you?

[samarrange]

DP and I are in our mid-60s. We lived in the EU for many years and ended up thinking about almost everything in metric. The hardest things to switch to were people's heights and (especially) weights. Even after getting a bathroom scale in kilos we would talk about people weighing 10 stone, 12 stone, etc. But otherwise we're metric all the time. I haven't used the "inches" side of a tape measure since the 1980s.

Nowadays it feels strange if we're around Americans and have to translate Celsius temperatures to Fahrenheit for them, or convert 100 metres into 328 feet. (Americans use feet, not yards, for most distances less than a mile. They only seem to use yards for gridiron football.) And don't get me started on "ounces" as a measure of liquids and not weight.

But... I still say "couple of inches" or "about a foot" for short distances, to the dismay of our DC who grew up 100% metric in France, and I can still envisage 4 ounces of flour in a dual metric/imperial recipe or a pound of onions at the shop. I don't think these things ever quite leave you.

We have fluid ounces in the UK, too, though I believe they're different from US fluid ounces. But we would always say fluid ounces, because as you say, ounces alone are weight.

52, brought up with metric at school, use a combo of both. Weight as in a persons weight and driving distance I tend to use imperial.

My grandmother was born in 1921 in a European country and even when she moved here after her marriage she consistently used metric. She thought imperial was daft.

@samarrange- ounces are complicated entities.

https://share.google/9C5tY0x03eO15F44E
(Wikipedia)

I grew up in the UK bit withna European mother. I'm a strange mix. I can do miles but not feet and inches. I can do weights for cooking in both lb and Oz and Kg and g from baking with my mum but also cooking with Good Housekeeping or Delia books but I can only measure people in metric for both height and weight.

Bit of both, sometimes for the same thing.

Height is in feet and inches.
Weight stones and pounds but also for me kilos.

Cooking cakes ounces. (But can convert)
Shopping kilos/grams

Measurements (length) can be inches or cm. But definitely miles.