8 thoughts on “Map of Nations that don’t use The Metric System”

  1. Funny thing is, a lot of nations that have supposedly “adopted” the metric system don’t use it in everyday life much, and in the US, where it hasn’t been “adopted,” it gets used all the time. During my travels in the UK I never heard anyone describe their weight in kilogrammes–only in stone. During my mission in Canada, people spoke in miles, feet and inches, not in kilometres, metres, and so forth. On the other hand, it’s a snap to find liter-measurement bottles or milligram-measured pharmaceuticals on US supermarket shelves, and during all the obstetrical appointments I’ve been to with my wife, talk has been all in centimeters.

    Is this supposed to be causing a problem of some kind? As near as I can tell, we’re all trading with each other quite freely.

  2. “During my mission in Canada, people spoke in miles, feet and inches, not in kilometres, metres, and so forth.”

    This must have been quite some time ago. My experience has been that the people with whom I communicate in Canada (if under the age of fifty or so) all talk of meters and litres.

  3. We’ve been using the metric system for years. It’s what I learned in school and I graduated secondary school in 1989.

  4. I was on my mission in Quebec during 1986 and 1987. No one told me he was a certain number of centimetres high. No one told me he weighed a certain number of kilos. And the few times that I discussed the distance to another town, I remember telling me how many miles it was.

  5. It’s common to use imperial to refer to height and weight of a person. Most people I know use metric to refer to long distances.

  6. For distances, I’ve noticed that most people use ‘kliks’ or minutes of driving where I live.

  7. Good point. Most people I know use time to measure driving distance. Few people use “clicks”, but more than the ones I know who use “miles”.

  8. In preparing to move to the UK, I’ve noticed that road distances are still measured in miles and cars are required to show miles on their speedometers. Adding this to the previous notes about how people there generally describe their weight in stone, their height in inches, and so on, I can’t help wondering what is meant when the map says the UK has “adopted” the metric system.

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