I am a born and bred Canadian, raised by a proud Scotsman who is passionately in love with both his homelands – the one of his birth, and the one of his choosing.
So it only seems natural that I spell like a Brit (‘Honour thy neighbour.’), make a good cup o’ tea, judge the warmth of a day in Celsius, and measure my runs in kilometers.
I find it most amusing then, that I still judge my height in feet, estimate small measurements in inches and cook in cups and ounces. This dichotomy represents something deep in the Canadian culture, which I have neither the time, nor the inclination to discover.
What sparked this whole insight, though, was the recipe I posted yesterday. I have listed:
2 – 540ml cans of black beans, rinsed
and
1 – 28oz can diced tomatoes
Now packaging in Canada, because it often comes from down south, generally lists both measurements. Why I chose metric for one and imperial for the other, I cannot fathom.
I worry about this, you see, because honestly, I’m functionally illiterate in both. I mix and match the systems randomly and don’t understand whole sections of either. For sewing, I measure in inches and meters. I use ounces fairly regularly, but have no idea about pints or quarts. I know a fever is 100F, but don’t know if 68F is warm or cool. I know that 25C is a pleasantly warm day, but is 39C a fever?
Perhaps things will clear up when it comes time to teach these things to my children. I love homeschooling. I love that every day I get to relive my education, to fill in the holes, to study things I never even dreamed of. I love that by the time I’m done, I’ll be some well rounded intellectual that six years of university couldn’t make me.
I’m so thankful for this wonderful opportunity. I am thankful for a daily adventure that allows me to learn and study; thankful for the time to share with my children all about why one is measured in ounces and one in milliliters.
So here’s to the mixing of the old and new, the British and the American, the best of both worlds, and the opportunity to share it all with my precious blessings!
Cheers
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I have the same problem! I am an American living in NZ. I’ve been here nearly seven years. I’m married to a Kiwi. When I first moved here I was working at a university and I had to adapt my spelling very quickly or the academics would make fun of me. But now I struggle to spell consistently one way or the other. I generally choose to spell the NZ way (when in Rome…) and I also have adjusted my speech so my accent has softened quite a lot. But when it comes to measurements, I’m all over the place. I can do recipes in either metric or imperial, but I can’t mix them very well. I am constantly having to translate the measurements in recipes because the cans of whatever are only measured in grams here, unless they’re imported from, say, Malaysia or Singapore, and therefore were intended for a larger market. If it was produced in NZ or Australia it’s only in grams. So my mom will send me a recipe that calls for a 14 oz can of chopped tomatoes and I instantly translate that in my mind to 425g can, which is approximately the same size.
My big question: what do you teach your children? Do you teach them one and then the other? Or do you teach them both at the same time? I am most interested in how to teach my children to spell. My oldest is nearly three so it’s not such an issue at present, but we’re starting to think about it. We’re seriously thinking about homeschooling so we’ll be able to control it but we don’t even know where to start. I want them to understand that although there are definite rules for spelling they differ depending on what country you’re living in.
Sorry for such a long comment, but it’s something that I’m really interested in!
Hi Michele,
Just this afternoon, we came across the word data (from the great card game Zigity) and my oldest (10yo) asked me, “Is that day-ta or dah-ta, because sometimes you say it one way and sometimes you say it the other?”
I replied, “It depends on whether I’m feeling American or British!”
The same kinda goes with spelling. We haven’t been doing spelling too long, because you really need to get reading down well, but we merely talk about how colour can be spelled both ways. I personally will accept both ways. I find my children tend to want to spell the British way, probably because I spell it that way, and we read a lot of older, British books, so I think it seems more familiar to them.
As far as measurements, my children sorta function poorly in both. I was thinking about having some sort of mini-measurement unit. I thought it might be kind of fun. I will probably teach them concurrently so I’ll introduce metric measurement and then line up imperial beside it. I can see a whole new set of dining room posters in my future!
That might be a great blog post if I can ever figure out the whole digital photo thing!
And thanks for stopping by. You are our very first comment ever!