Found this discussion on another forum where people were discussing the replacement of yards by metres and how yards are dying out in speech. These are people not biased by the metric/imperial debate. Just observing a common trend.

Here is the first post:


metres and yards
Posted: 15-Aug-2005 10:41



I find it progressive that more people now say "metre" instead of yards without any formal requirement to do so and eually as surprised as "yards" are still on our road sings. Is amazing the Transport Department hasn't noticed this huge skip in word use and helped us move on like the rest of the Commonwealth ( err..the world really). Hearign someoen say "yards" just sounds old fashioned now.

Here is the 6-th:

Elk
Re: metres and yards
Posted: 16-Aug-2005 22:27

I would say that there are plenty of people perpetuating the imperial 'dream', Penz. But as the original posting suggests, it is the 'metric dream' that is becoming 'the norm' now.

I have to say that I hear metres used when once yards was used. The more it's heard the more it becomes part of the language. The same must be said for kilo, litre, grams and even 'mils' I think that's millilitres, not miles!

I only really expect older people to say yards, gallons & lbs now.




The rest of the posts follow here:

http://www.open2.net/forum/thread.jspa?threadID=3448&tstart=0

I can now safely assume that you have never visited the UK.

So the British people in the forum who claim they are hearing the word metre spoken more often then yards are either imagining it or are liars. Why visit the UK? I can just tune into a biased radio station with pre-selected call in listeners who are told to speak imperial, then I too can say the posters to the forum are liars too.

I've never heard of radio stations pre-select listeners depending on their use of imperial or metric.

Ah, I get it! You've lost the argument.

The BBC is one such station

Really?

So if you phone in to a show that's discussing, say, a local school banning conkers, the telephonist will ask "Will you be mentioning imperial or metric measures?" ?

And depending on what you answer they'll either hang-up or put you through?

No, I suspected not!



We all have our "mad half hours" I guess!!!

All radio stations filter their callers. They will interview you off line and from what you say they decide whether to play it or not. If you speak metric, and the station is trying to promote an imperial format, they can decide not to play your comment or edit out the part where you spoke metric. It isn't that difficult to do.

And you are saying that the BBC filters out those people who sometimes use metric notation?

That the BBC is anti-metric?

The BBC leaves it up to the individual editor.

Ah! I think we are at cross wires, Martin.

Daniel and I are talking about call-in radio shows. I believe you are talking about editors to news/documentary shows.

That makes a lot more sense now, after reading your original posting.