REAL ENGLISH: Talking about measurements: cm, m, km, ', ", lb, kg, g, oz, ml, cc

Hi. Welcome to engVid. I'm Adam. In today's video, we're going to look at measurements

and we're going to look at measurements in everyday uses. So, these are measurements

that you will hear and have to say pretty regularly when we're talking about people

or food or drinks or places, distances, etc. So, I'm going to start with people, and basically

when we talk about measurements, we're going to talk about a person's height and a person's

weight. Okay? So, let's talk about height. So, I'm going to use the measure 6'2". So,

for example, I am 6 feet 2 inches tall. So, if somebody asks me, "How tall are you?" most

commonly I will say, "I'm 6'2". 6'2". Everybody understand? 6 is feet, and this is the symbol

for feet. 2 is inches, and that's the symbol for inches. Okay? One apostrophe or double

quote. So, "How tall are you?" "I'm 6'2". But if I want to expand, I can say, "I'm 6'2".

I can put the actual unit of measure, we're talking about feet. One foot is 12 inches,

or about 30.4-something centimeters. Okay? So, I'm 6'2". And if you want to... If you're

not sure how to pronounce "inches", "in-ches", "in-ches", that's how it's pronounced. Doesn't...

Not necessarily the way it looks. Okay?

Now, this is where English becomes a little bit crazy. Now, technically you want to make

it plural because there's six of them, right? So, you're thinking, "Why do I say foot?"

I don't know. That's just the way we say it. I'm 6'2", but if I'm going to use the word

"tall", if I'm going to use the full expression, then I'm going to use the correct expression.

I'm 6'2" tall. So, how tall are you? I'm 6'2". How tall are you? I'm 6'2". How tall are you?

I'm 6'2" tall. Okay? It depends how you're saying... How you say it depends which word

you're going to say. Foot twice, feet once with the "tall". Okay?

Now, sometimes you might hear... It's a little bit rude, it's not very nice to say, but for

a short person... How tall is that guy? He's 5'0". 5'0", nothing basically means zero,

so 5 feet, period. If somebody is 6 feet tall, 6 feet tall. How tall are you? 6. But again,

you wouldn't say 6, you'd say 6 feet. If there's no inches, then you just say 6 feet, 6 feet

tall. It doesn't matter foot, feet, whatever. With no inches, that's how it is. If somebody's

really short, 5'0" means... The "nothing" basically means short. Okay? Or just say 5

feet. Okay.

A meter, 88. So, for those of you who don't know imperial measures... So, again, in Canada

we are... We are influenced by both American English and British English. So, Canadian

English is a bit of a blend. So, if somebody asks me how tall I am, I'll answer in the

American way. If they ask me the distance, I'll answer in metric, in kilometers, not

miles. Okay? But... So, feet and inches, but if you need to know the metric, I'm a meter,

88. Now, you can spell "meter" this way or this way. This is more the British spelling,

this is the American spelling. The pronunciation is "me-ter", or if you have "s", five meters.

Okay? "Me-ters". So, I'm a meter, 88, or 188 centimeters. Okay, so that's for height. Feet

and inches, meters and centimeters. Okay?

If you want to talk about somebody's weight, again, in Canada most people will tell you

their weight in pounds, but in other countries they'll tell you their weight in kilograms.

So, first thing to know, so how much do you weigh? I'm 195 pounds. Now, I have heard people

say "libs" or "leibs". We do not say this word. The actual word is "libra", but we don't

actually use this word ever to talk about weight or any sort of measurement. We say

"pounds". Okay? The original Latin was "libra pondo" or something like that, and that's

where the "pounds" comes from. So, 195 pounds. "Pow-ns", "pow-ns", "pounds". Okay? That's

the pronunciation.

And if you want to convert it to metric, I'm 88 kilograms. Okay? Now, there are two ways

to say this as well. Some people will say "kilos". Okay? And some people will say the

full word, "kilograms". The pronunciation is a little bit different. If you're saying

"kilos", then it's "ki-los". And if you're saying "kilograms", then it's "ki-lo"... Actually,

we don't actually have the "w". "Ki-lo-grams", "kilograms". "Kilos", "kilograms". Okay.

And British people sometimes still use "stone". One stone is 14 pounds, in case you ever hear

"stone". I think only in England they use this, as far as I know. In Canada, if you

tell somebody your weight in stone, they have no idea what you're talking about, so keep

that in mind.

So, we're talking about people. Now, let's move on to a completely different area. "Food"

and "beverage". "Food" and "beverages". Food you eat, beverage you drink. Okay? Now, here

we have all kinds of things we can work with. We can work with ounces, so "oz", that's the

unit of measure shortened. It's "ounce", that's what it looks like open, pronounced "ow" and

"ence". "Ounce". Okay? One ounce equals 28 grams. So, we can use ounces for small units

of weight measure. We can also use ounces for volume measure, for liquids. One ounce

is 29.5 milliliters. "Mi-li-ters". Some people will say "mil" or "mils", 29 mils. That's...

Again, that's a shortcut. If you hear it, you understand it's milliliters. We don't

say "kigs", however. We say "mils", we don't say "kigs". Okay? And we also say "cubic centimeters".

Again, not in Canada. I've heard it more used in Europe when they talk about liquid measures.

"Cubic centimeters", "cubic centimeter". And one ounce is also 29.5 cubic centimeters or 29.5 mil. Okay?

Now, then we get to pounds. And again, we're talking about small amounts. If you're talking

about larger amounts, you just give the large amount or the kilograms. Here, you're going

to give one pound is 16 ounces. So, again, when you're reading a recipe, for example...

Excuse me. And they say use a 16-ounce can of crushed tomatoes. A 16-ounce can is a one

pound can, or 454 grams if you want to use the metric measure for this. Now, if you go

to a pub and you want to order a beer, you will order a pint, let's say, or a half pint.

Now, here's where it gets a little bit confusing. British and Canadian pints are 20 ounces or

568 milliliters. And if you want to... If you go to the States and you order a pint,

you're going to get a 16-ounce beer, and that's 473 milliliters. So, it's important to understand

the different things.

Now, not a big deal. If you go to the States and you order a pint and it's smaller than

you're used to, whatever, just order another pint. But if you go to the States, if you're

used to American pints, and you go to Canada or you go to the UK and you get a pint that's

bigger, so make sure you don't get drunk. That's the key. Okay? And if you're following

recipes, if it's metric, just convert. Okay? It's very easy to go online

and find conversion charts. So, don't worry if you find a good recipe for a dish you really

like and all the measurements are in American measurements, like imperial measurements,

or if they're in metric. Just go online, find yourself a conversion chart, and make the

changes necessary so you can follow the recipe. Okay? Let's look at some other points where

we use measurements.

Okay, so now we're going to look at different measures. We're going to look at distances,

lengths, and some sizes, and we're going to look at talking about gas and talking about

temperatures. So, let's start with distance. First of all, in the States, if you drive

down to the States, your speedometer on your car will be a little bit confusing. If you

rented a car in Canada, for example, and you drove down to the States, keep in mind they

use miles. In Canada, we use kilometres. One mile is 1.6 kilometres. So, 100... I don't

remember the exact thing, but if you're going on a highway and your speed limit is 100 kilometres

per hour, in the States that's about 60 or 65, something like that. I don't really remember,

but anyway. Kilometres. K-i-l-o-m-e-t-e-r-s. Notice that it's not metres, okay? And it's

not like... Like, kilograms is about the same. Kilo, kilo. Kilometres, kilograms. So, the

"la" is a little bit different, and the "metres" is not "me-ters", it's "metres". Kilometres.

Okay? One mile, 1.6 kilometres. Now, again, Americans use yards. One yard is 0.914 metres.

Now, another thing to notice. "Kilometres" has an "s", "metres" doesn't. Why? I really

don't know, but that's the way it is. "Metres", we don't put the "s". "Kilometres", we do.

"Kilograms", we do. "Centimetres", we don't. Okay? So, point... Now, another thing to notice,

I say "point", 9-1-4. Okay? You can say 0.914 if you want, but this is pronounced "point".

Not decimal, not period, nothing else like that.

Now, again, we talked about height, so they're using feet and inches, so one foot is 30.48

centimetres, one inch is 2.54 centimetres if you want to be precise. Generally speaking,

we don't get too deep into these numbers. What we do is we round things off, but I'll

talk about that in a minute. We go to the nearest whole number, so we just cut this

out and just say 30. Technically, 2.54, so we just cut this out and say 2.5. We'll go

to the nearest thousandth, you can say 0.5 if you want as well, 30.5 centimetres, so

inches.

Now, the thing about measures, when we talk about size, okay, a lot of people like to

use analogies, and an analogy is basically a comparison to something else, something

more familiar. So, especially in America or Canada, we use sports things, sports facilities.

You'll quite often hear Americans describe something as very big or very long by how

many football fields it is. So, let's say somebody wants to talk about the new aircraft

carrier the Navy has just built. It's huge, it's very big, it's three football fields.

It's the length of three football fields, okay. And we would say it like this, the length

of three football fields. Each football field is 120 yards, if you want to get the idea.

A lot of people, if you want to use metric, use Olympic pool. So, the city or the new

town or the farm, the person's farm is the length of five Olympic pools. One Olympic

pool is 50 meters, it is 250 meters long, okay. In Canada, you'll sometimes hear people,

because we love hockey in Canada, you'll sometimes hear people compare it to a hockey rink. A

hockey rink is 200 feet long, okay, that's what they play on.

Now, sometimes people will talk about things in terms of a marathon, okay. If you're talking

about how far it is, oh, it's a marathon, you can't walk it, it's too far. A marathon

is 42 kilometers or 26 miles. A lot of people do half marathons, so they do, whatever, 21

and 13, right? So, we, again, we use analogies because we can picture a football field. If

you tell me something is 500 yards long, I can't really imagine 500 yards. If you tell

me it's more than four football fields, okay, wow, that's very long, I can imagine that.

You'll also often hear the quarter mile, especially in racing. If you saw movies like Fast and

Furious, they always have a race or a quarter mile. In horse racing, they race a quarter

mile. So, a quarter mile is 402 meters, but these are expressions you'll hear often.

Now, again, if you don't go to the States, you think I don't need to know these expressions,

but if you watch Hollywood movies and they're using American English, they're going to use

a lot of these expressions, a lot of these measures. If you don't have the subtitles,

it's a good idea to have at least a close idea of what the conversion is, okay?

Now, where it gets very confusing is when you're using tools. It depends what kind of

tools you're using. You can use imperial, which is basically American, or technically

imperial measures are British, but we now think about them as American, or metric. So,

if you're going... If you're going to fix a car and the car was built with metric specs,

we call these specs short for specifications, okay? So, the builder used metric specs, so

all the tools are going to be metric. So, if you need, like, a wrench with a socket

and you need a 10mm socket, and all you have is imperial tools, and it's like 3/16ths of

an inch, it might not fit exactly. So, you might be a little bit... It might be a bit

difficult for you to use the different tools. Most mechanics who fix cars have two sets

of tools, an imperial set and a metric set. That way they can work on any car that they

need to, okay?

Speaking of cars, if you go fill up gas, again, in Canada we use litres and we have a price

per litre. I think today the price per litre is $1.10 and 10 cents per litre. If you go

down to the States, you're paying for gas by the gallon. Now, a gallon is, again, it's

a measure that has different numbers in the UK and different numbers in the States. In

the States, one gallon is 3.8 litres. I rounded it up a little bit. Or in the UK, it's four

and a half litres. So, rounded off, we say "is rounded off" or "to round off" is the

verb. So, for example, the 3.8 is actually 3.786 or something like that, but I'm thinking

too many numbers. I don't want to deal with all these numbers. So, what I want to do is

I want to round off to the nearest tenth, okay? The first point. So, tenth, hundredth,

very difficult to pronounce. So, I make this into an eight, okay? Because an eight, I go

up one. If it was under five, I would go down to the next number. But then I'm thinking

3.8, why deal with all these numbers? Why make it difficult for myself? I'll just round

it out to four. So, round off to four litres. So, if I'm measuring, so US gallon, if I want

to compare to Canadian. So, one gallon is four litres, that's how much I'm thinking

how much it will cost me in Canadian. And then I understand that, you know, American

gas is cheaper than Canadian gas because it's... You pay per gallon.

So, then let's talk about temperature. So, that was gas. Let's talk about temperature.

And we have Fahrenheit and Celsius. Now, it's very confusing to try to understand how the

conversion works, but the main numbers you need to know. 32 degrees Fahrenheit, again,

this is used in the US, is zero degrees Celsius. Celsius is used pretty much everywhere else.

32 and zero, that's the freezing point, okay? So, that's freezing. And then you need to

know 212 degrees Fahrenheit equals 100 degrees Celsius, that's the boiling point. The only

time they are the same is -40 degrees Fahrenheit and -40 degrees Celsius, that's when they're

even. Now, there are formulas, you can try to figure out how to convert, but don't. You

have a... You have a phone, you have Google on your phone, get a conversion chart and

just ask Google to do it for you, because the math is too complicated for Fahrenheit

and Celsius, okay?

But if you really want to know the difference between American and British measurements,

Jill, my co-teacher here at engVid, has done a very good video comparing the two countries'

measurements. You should go watch that. Also, if you want to make sure you understand all

of these units of measurement and all of the ways to use them, go to www.engvid.com. There's

a quiz there that you can take to test your understanding of this. If you have any questions,

please ask in the comments section at engVid. If you like this video, please give me a thumbs

up, give me a like, and subscribe to my YouTube channel. And come back again for more helpful

lessons to help you with your English. See you again very soon. Bye.