Newbie question :) be kind...

It's another one of the things the Americans changed to distance themselves from their predominently British ancestry. "Brits will say '4 x 2' so we'll use '2 x 4'."

They do it all the time and have done since the revolution.

-- Cheers

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

48° 25' North Longitude: 123° 21' West

The vast majority of American actors couldn't and can't do an acceptable British accent to save their lives. :-)

They think they can but they can't. OTOH, most UK actors can do many accents, they have to as the UK has dozens and dozens of regional accents, so to work an actor must be able to master many of them. Which is why the vast majority can pull of an American accent with no problem.

-- Cheers

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

48° 25' North Longitude: 123° 21' West

Which "ton" are you discussing. A real ton, 2240lbs? An American ton, 2000 lbs. A metric tonne, 2,204.6lbs?

I'm confused.

-- Cheers

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

48° 25' North Longitude: 123° 21' West

Whow, the buggered up my nice and clean 1/87 scale, which was already a compromise... Nobody can be trusted upon nowadays...

Yes, that is the modelers burden. I am afraid we have to live with that ;-)

Groet, salut, Wim.

I make things even worse. A scale of 1/87 is impractical, you need a calulator for that.

To be able to do it by head I use the scale 11,5 mm/m. 11.5 millimeter to the meter. The calculation goes: take the prototype measurement. Divide by 100. Add 10 %. Add another half of that, 5%. That gives the scale dimenson. On paper it is as easy.=20 Prototype, say 12,34 m /100 gives 0,1234 m =3D 123,4 mm add 10% =3D 12,34 12,34 mm

5% half of above 6,17 mm ----------+ totals 141,91 mm I hope to have used fixed font... For me 1/87 =3D 0,011494 is close enough to 11,5/1000 =3D 0,011500. 1/87,1 makes no notceable difference.

Groet, salut, Wim.

That's not a bad reason, but there is also a logical basis. Two inch stock can end up ripped into 2x2, 2x4, 2x6, 2x8, 2x10 or 2x12 lumber; likewise 4 inch stock ends up as 4x4, 4x6, 4x8, etc. timbers. If I need a deck joist I know I want 4 imch stock and either 6 or 8 or 10 inches of depth dependent on the span.

I have 7 shillings 6 pence worth of sympathy for your guinea's worth of confusion.

Yeah, but did you ever hear the original (not director's cut) Das Boot, with those Yorkshire and/or Midlands accents speaking out of supposed Kriegsmarine machinist's mates mouths? What a hoot, but totally destructive of any attempt at a willing suspension of disbelief.

I'll raise you a groat.

-- Cheers

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

48° 25' North Longitude: 123° 21' West

I refuse to watch "Das Boot" in anything but subtiled German same as I refuse to watch a colourised version of the 1951 "A Christmas Carol", starring Alastair Sim.

-- Cheers

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

48° 25' North Longitude: 123° 21' West

ROTFL.

Excellent!

I'll have to have a whisky and think about seeing your raise.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't give a farthing about it, but I think you're having far too much fun at our expense, guv'ner.

Piffle. I would think it's more likely because of board stock - the 2 is the unchanging part in a lot of sizes, and so and it goes first.

I think you just made that up. *

Did you even read what i wrote? *

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:48:13 -0800, I said, "Pick a card, any card" and "Roger T." instead replied:

I'll see that and raise you a shreep.

-- Ray

">>>>Which "ton" are you discussing. A real ton, 2240lbs? An American ton,

I've been rumbled. :-)

-- Cheers

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

48° 25' North Longitude: 123° 21' West

"PV" <

Not really, think about it.

It started with the military.

Stripes the other way up.

Saluting short way up, long way down.

Shuffling feet instead of stamping feet.

Not swinging arms as much.

Rifle on edge and not flat and the shoulder arms.

And later Landing craft Tank rather than Tank Landing Craft.

Quonset hut Vs Nissen Hut.

Even Webster invented "Zee" to replace "Zed" so that the Americans would have a unique letter of the alphabet. And even spelling, the Americans decided to be different.

If you look at all the differences between American English and UK English, it seems a reasonable argument. Americans create unique American names for things, in may cases, just to be different.

And this is not an anti-American attack, it's just an observation 'cause I don't care what they call something, provided I can translate it back into real English. ;-)

-- Cheers

Roger T. Home of the Great Eastern Railway at:-

48° 25' North Longitude: 123° 21' West

Amen. But do try to be sure it's the director's cut - Petersen did restore, recut, etc. some of the film and it's better for it. Also fun commentary and goo d "making of" stuff on how they managed to do so much better a job of effects than the U-505 sclockfest produced (not to mention a less puerile story line).

If he didn't, he should have. Actually, there has been a tremendous amount of borrowing both ways. For example, beware of assuming that an 'Americanism' is one - it's just as likely to be a Britishism imported by the Americans and exported back to Britain. As for Canadians - we take the best of both worlds. Or the worst. It all depends on whether we've had our morning coffee at Timmie's.

Then there's Anglicisms, alleged imports of English into Canadian French, most of which were originally French anyhow - like "stop", which derives from French "estopper", which derives from a Norse word that's related to the English "stuff".

I Hope This helps. Really. ;-)