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For example, in the USA, the english vs spanish divide pretty much aligns with the US/mexico border. If both countries used the same language, the border could be more easily moved by groups friendly to one government over another. The effect could be strengthened by requiring english/spanish tests at the border, and preventing teaching in the 'wrong' language.
It can also prevent emigration of the smartest people.
Why then have no serious attempts occurred by parts of Canada to join the US or vice versa? Most of both countries speaks English and only English, with extreme cultural overlap and a huge shared border.
I don’t think most of the southern US would want to deal join the mess that is northern Mexico right now, nor would the cartels want to release northern Mexico into the relative safety of the southern US. That matters far more than the different majority language across the US-Mexico border.
> For example, in the USA, the english vs spanish divide pretty much aligns with the US/mexico border.
If you’re talking only about the number 1 language in each country, then sure, but otherwise you’re vastly underestimating how much Spanish there is in the US, especially in states like California, New York, Texas, and Florida among others.
It’s easy for anglophones to ignore “por español, oprima dos” in phone menus or to tune out the daily occurrences of Spanish one passes on the streets or doesn’t quite hear clearly from the front in restaurant kitchens, but it’s all around us to the extent that Spanish-speaking visitors can get around fine with limited or no English in some major cities - and that’s getting only more true, not less.
The US has more Spanish speakers including those of limited competency than any other country except Mexico, including Spain; if you restrict to native-level speakers, the US appears to be number 5 on the global list, behind Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and remarkably narrowly behind Spain.
Source (2021), in Spanish: https://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/espanol_lengua_viva/pdf/espa...
The same source notes the continuing growth of Spanish language and Hispanic origins in the US. It predicts that by 2060 the US will be the second biggest Spanish-speaking country (I presume they mean natively or at a native level), and that 27.5% of the US will be of Hispanic origin.
To be clear, I don’t mind the growth of Spanish in the US and don’t view English as inherent to the American identity, even though I’m a native anglophone. Hell, German was pretty major in the US too before the world wars last century, and my immigrant great-grandparents probably spoke Yiddish better than English. The foundation of the US is not about linguistics, nor ethnicity.
The fact that many adult cannot spell 100% correctly, proves that spelling is difficult.
Writing a language is always harder than reading. Many people rely on muscle memory when writing words. It might be that this works better for writing chinese characters than for words, which is more likely to fail when words contain multiple instances of characters.
It might also be the case that the number of strokes needed to write an average characters is about the same as writing an average word.
The US continues to use them though, it's part of their culture. We don't need to optimise everything, and the world would be a very sad place if we did.
I've picked up woodworking and imperial inch fractions are a much better mental model for simple math (doubling/halving/dividing lengths, centering things etc) than arbitrary mm values.
There's also a thing about the inch being a (subjectively) good "bite size" unit. 1cm is too small, 10cm is way too big.
"Okay, 6+3/4 inches doubled, that's 12+6/4 inches. But 6/4 is 1+2/4 which is 1+1/2, so 13+1/2 inches, or 1ft 1+1/2in".
"Okay, 17.14cm doubled, that's 34.28cm".
Really, for you the first one is easier?
The imperial system emerged piecemeal as a series of domain-specific measurements, where each unit conveyed deeper meaning beyond rote volume, distance, etc. For example, an acre means much more than 43,560 feet squared. It means "roughly the amount of land that a pair of oxen can plow in a day". A nice domain-specific measurement that communicates something useful to the experts of that domain, in this case, plowmen, farmers, and lords of the manor.
With inches, an inch is about the length of your thumb. Imagine doing woodworking and measuring in thumbs - it's right there in front of you, easy to conceptualize and work with, an intuitive "bite-size" unit of measurement. Fractional centimeters aren't as intuitive to work with and conceptualize. 6+3/4 inches is a lot more workable than 17.14cm.
Your example is a prime one. I'm not used to measure things with my thumbs, so if you told me that something is ten thumbs wide, I'd have to think some time before I could make a mental picture of it, and an inaccurate one to boot. I'm used to measure things with centimeters, so I immediately know what 10 cm looks like.
> Fractional centimeters aren't as intuitive to work with and conceptualize.
To you they're not. To people used to it, they are.
Example: I mostly work with 3/4" thick material, which is a breeze to divide into 3 for 1/4" mortice and tenons. The equivalent 19mm in that respect is a bit trickier, though fortunately EU 3/4 lumber tends to be only 18mm thick.
Housing would be measured in 平米, square meters. It's pretty much impossible to understand that one as anything other than an adoption of the foreign norm. (Similarly for 斤, set at half a kilogram to fall within the range of traditional use while still fitting seamlessly into the metric system. But wholesale adoption there would mean measuring weights in 公斤, kilograms, which isn't done much.)