Currently Le Monde diplomatique (https://mondediplo.com/) is the only world news I'm reading, it's always a joy to get it in the mail, and I really appreciate the quality of journalism and analyses.
I've always thought of Esperanto as the metric system of languages.
And whenever a thread comes up on HN with people railing against imperial measurement units, I wonder why they're not also speaking Esperanto.
[*] https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/2cjiau/self...
Nice troll. The metric system is actually used by everyone aside from the US as far as I know ;)
Not a troll at all. It's a language developed to be used as an international standard by people across all languages and cultures.
Please explain how the statement is a troll.
everyone aside from the US as far as I know
Then here is an opportunity to educate yourself. There are a bunch of countries that use imperial units both officially and informally.
I'd do the Googling for you, but I'm on mobile right now and not able to search properly.
Not really. It's not like it was developed by a universal consortium. It was created by a European guy and it draws primarily from Indo-European & Germanic languages. It's foreign to someone who isn't already well-acquainted with an Indo-European or Germanic language.
By contrast, most metric units as currently defined are relevant to most people across the globe. For instance, water boils at around 70-80c in Nepal, but most countries have some population that lives around sea level.
That's not completely false, but it quite misleading.
It's true that the boiling point on the top of Everest at just under 9000m is just under 70C. The boiling point only drops to 80C at 6000m, which is very high even for Nepal.
But the average elevation of Nepal is just over 3000m, where the boiling point is just under 90C. Kathmandu is at 1400m, with a boiling point around 95C. And the low point in Nepal is less than 100m above sea level, where the boiling point is pretty close to 100C.
I never use these units, other than in fixed expressions like "it goes on for miles". I think exclusively in metres for attempting to measure the length of anything, especially if I'm trying to be exact. Millimetres to metres to kilometres is all automatic. I don't actually know how big a yard is, other than knowing it's very slightly shorter than a metre. A foot is about 30 cm, that's how I know how big a foot is. I'd need to look at a conversion chart to tell you whether I need a t-shirt or a light jacket for 76 °F. I just know it's somewhere vaguely above freezing but not intolerably hot.
For my generation the units still in use are mostly limited to pounds (mostly for people's weight and produce), feet and inches (particularly for people's height), and cups, Farenheit and tablespoons in recipes. I've noticed even those are disappearing slowly. After a long period of dual labelling with $ per lb being larger on the sign, some stores now have $ per kg larger than the $ per lb. My mother was quite consternated when she first encountered packaging only in $ per kg a few years ago. Her generation was raised on the traditional units and switched in their teens and 20s and have been, understandably, confused by the metric units ever since. To her, a metre is thought of in terms like slightly longer than a yard. The metric units are alien and unnatural to her in the same way the traditional ones are to me.
In several provinces, they teach the American units to students as part of the curriculum. Again. After systematically excising every mention of traditional units 40 years ago. Being familiar with American units helps with trade and understanding American literature. That wasn't necessary for my generation (I could just ask my parents or an older coworker what a quart was!) but it might be now.
Well then it is nothing like the metric system, which was developed by French scientists to get rid of the multitude of units bearing the same name with different definitions depending on location, and with stupid multiples. Which was then further rationalised and made into an international standard. So yeah, the analogy was either woefully uninformed, or a troll.
Despite all of Esperanto's qualities, I am yet to bump into a fluent speaker in the flesh.
Stating they are similar seems like a troll to me.
In Germany for instance almost everything is metric except (ironically?) for computers and televisions, you still measure your screen in Zoll (inches). And you see Pfund (pound) in markets but they normalized that to 500g long ago, so it's kinda-sorta in the system.
I'm in Thailand right now and most things are in metric besides, again, computers and TVs -- 13" laptop, 27" monitor, 52" TV, etc -- but then, maddeningly for me, picture frames are usually measured in inches. So while you have DIN A4 and DIN A3 frames, because office paper uses DIN sizes AFAICT, it's really hard to find a 24x30cm or 30x40cm frame.
And then there is the United Kingdom...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_King...
That’s the same thing in France, but I think it’s just a byproduct of so much of computer stuff coming from the US. Computer monitors tend to be informally measured in inches (though you have to provide the figure in cm as well), and television sets in cm.
By the way, inches have been defined in terms of cm for quite a while now, so they are just a really annoying non-integer multiple of the cm.
> And you see Pfund (pound) in markets but they normalized that to 500g long ago, so it's kinda-sorta in the system.
That’s right, a (metric) pound is half a kilogram. That was defined in a decree by Napoleon in 1812 as a way for people to keep using old units names without giving up on the advantages of the metric system.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesures_usuelles
> picture frames are usually measured in inches.
That’s just evil.
> And then there is the United Kingdom...
Yeah, can’t have that new fangled French thing. So now we buy milk in 2.272 l bottles. On the contrary, on the continent they are happy to sell you a pint of beer, but don’t expect an imperial pint.
Pints and beer measures are just hilarious. Australia is crazy they have pints, schooners, pots and ponies (and some others as well I think). The total craziness is that their size (and even order IIRC) is different in different states.
Edit: link for clarification https://manofmany.com/lifestyle/drinks/beer-glass-sizes-in-a...
I just checked and two of the three main stores (darty, boulanger) give the size in cm, with a convertion to inches.
The third one (fnac) uses primarily inches.
English has been adopted as the international language (largely thanks to American TV, Movie and Music exports) so Esperanto doesn't really deliver much and doesn't have the numbers to be worth it.
The British Empire might have had something to do with it too...
The main point is: to be peaceful and diverse we need a common easy language to communicate, one that put everyone on par, so an artificial language. Unfortunately to craft a society all élite need a common language of course limited to their "society", so the current world superpower de-facto impose it's language. In the past was French, not English, tomorrow who knows.
Until people realize that to really progress we need to be diverse and communicative and so we need a common language just for international relations no one will push toward that and nothing really change.
To figure out how much a language means just try the ability to read the press from many different countries and how doing so form a less directed vision of the world making easy to spot propaganda from reality.
(Aesthetic note: that's the actual URL. No trackers. No strings of nonsense. Sweetly concise. Says more than I realized about a team's culture.)
* https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/4/7/bank-of-japan-mem...
* https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/sports/baseball/julio-rod...
Likely less due to the team's "culture" but instead normal things like SEO, UX, etc. There are no tracker parameters in the URL, but there is a tracker on the page itself. They say outright this change is in part to make money, there's nothing wrong with that.
However, fair warning: Le Monde diplomatique is heavily biased reporting.
Take the BBC for example, they're as close as I can get to a neutral source but even they have a somewhat left wing bias. It's pretty mild though and they do have some somewhat right wing voices. As a moderate right winger I find it absolutely fine and easy to take into account. The Economist is great, and even the Guardian is worth reading from time to time. It's good to know what people with different opinions are thinking and why.
I cannot stomach Fox News though. Those people are deranged, it's practically RT for America. The Daily Mail here in the UK is almost as bad, they knowingly and regularly distort climate science data to misrepresent it for example. I'm a climate optimist, but the DM blatantly falsifies results. I still go to their web sites to check out how they are reporting things from time to time, but they're not just right leaning, they're constructing an all out ultraconservative fantasy reality.
Maybe I should try the Express or Telegraph, they might reflect my political views better but I can't be bothered. I find a close echo chamber for my own opinions rather boring. The nearest thing I consume to how I think is the Economist but they always keep it interesting with thoughtful analysis of current events and even post mortems when they get things wrong. They also sometimes give air time to opposing views.
Maintaining my views while constantly being pulled leftward by at least some of the media I consume to be a constructive dynamic. I don't always agree with them, but at lest I'm well informed on why. For some reason left media tends to be much more centrist these days than right media which is ultra radicalised. Back in my youth it was the other way around. Left media used to be so bonkers it was hilarious, now right media is so bonkers it's terrifying.
Actually I would say the BBC is everything but neutral. My partner reads the BBC while I consume more German news and the Guardian. It is often very obvious that the BBC often ignores news that reflect negatively on the UK government, even if they are very prominent in sources from mainland Europe and e.g. the Guardian.
The bias is so strong, more often than not you can make out from the title in which direction the article is going to be twisted.
The BBC is very, very far from being a neutral source, and your "somewhat" there is a very big understatement.
I prefer that to the appearance of objectivity, which cannot be more than a facade and is more insidious. What is unacceptable is made up facts, but I am happy with opinionated analysis.
Since it's impossible to cover everything that happens in the universe, choosing which news is important is a big part of being partial.
Anyway, I am less surprised that a revolutionary comrade like you is interested in knowing how the establishment thinks (to fight it I guess) than by OP's attitude, i.e., a reactionary taking interest (and judging positively) what the revolutionaries are writing. In my experience, people self-labelling as right-leaning tend to dismiss anything coming from the left as "utopian bullshit".
We need to be in contact with other opinions. As long as these opinions are based on our actual reality, not an alternate imaginary universe.
Le monde is a general (centrist) daily newspaper. LMD is a staunchly left-wing monthly.