Electronic conventions I hate

ChrisP58 said:

I have one like that. Stanley brand. It has inch markings on one side and mm markings on the other.

One problem with adjustable wrenches is that they frequently drift, so you have to keep re-adjusting them. I use the markings on this wrench to tell me what size the fastener is, then get the right wrench from my tool box.

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Hi,

Ha ha, not a bad idea.

MrAl said:

Some have inch, some have metric,and some have both scales.

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But this one takes it to another level:



JimB

JimB said:

But this one takes it to another level:

View attachment 114073

JimB

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Hi,

Oh yes, ha ha. So German born people are not allowed to buy this one

Another 'interesting' point is that mine adjusts down to zero inches, but there no nuts that are zero inches across

MrAl said:

So German born people are not allowed to buy this one

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It is OK, most of the Germans can speak very good English, so they can use it.

JimB

JimB said:

It is OK, most of the Germans can speak very good English, so they can use it.

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It really depends where they live, while they do English at school it doesn't mean they are any good at it - I did French at school, and am useless at it

My daughter lives in the Netherlands now, and 'generally' English is widely spoken - particularly in Amsterdam. However, where she lives is close to the German boarder, so their second language tends to be German rather than English - I went to a small Radio Museum there, and the guy who runs it doesn't speak any English at all, and was very excited to have an English visitor.

My daughter is currently leaning Dutch, and due to take her exam later this year - essentially a high school Dutch qualification.

Her brother-in-law failed his English at school, and this was limiting his work potential, he works in a clothing store and you can't get promoted with out having the high school English qualification. Melissa and her Husband helped him with his English, and he retook it and passed OK - he now manages the store.

When we popped in to Germany last year we didn't find much English been spoken - but again, it's not the sort of area where you're likely to.

Which is why I said "most of the Germans can speak very good English"

When I was in Germany in June, most people that I encountered did speak good English, but not all.
One notable exception was one of the receptionists in the little hotel where I stayed.
She even apologised that here English was poor and seemed to be quite relieved that I could speak reasonable German.
Once or twice I have been complimented that I speak good German.
The downside of that of course is that they start to think that I am fluent, which I am certainly not, and they start using big words that I do not know.

What I don't understand is, why, when I have never said a word, these funny foreign people will start speaking to me in English.
Do I have a Union Flag tattooed across my forehead?

JimB

JimB said:

What I don't understand is, why, when I have never said a word, these funny foreign people will start speaking to me in English.
Do I have a Union Flag tattooed across my forehead?

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Melissa is fair haired and fair skinned, so is often mistaken as Scandinavian - but she does seem to find British people wherever she goes

Her husband is completely bemused by it, he can't understand how British people managed to congregate together everywhere.

Hi,

I was just joking though and i said "German born" which could be either English speaking or not
It was a joke on the writeup on the cardboard where if their language is not on there then they are barred from owning it

MrAl said:

It was s joke on the writeup on the cardboard where if their language is not on there then they are barred from owning it

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Yes we knew that!

I love small hardware stores. Unfortunately, their numbers are dwindling.

To the original post: I am fully conversant with both unit systems and use the one which fits the best for the task at hand.

Having said that , for science and engineering is SI all the way.
And the only schematic symbols that I despise are IEC logic symbols.

Nigel Goodwin said:

Yes we knew that!

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Hi,

Jim's reply looked a little serious so i just wanted to make sure i was understood.
I am happy you understood though

On the plus side, this is one of the sturdiest adjustable wrenches i ever had, maybe because it only opens 1 inch.

MrAl said:

Jim's reply looked a little serious

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Serious? Moi?

Yes and no.

All the banter about the spanner is just that, banter.

One of the things which does grip my bits is the attitude of English speaking persons from the UK (and the USA) to learning and using other languages.
English has become the de facto international language, that makes us lazy.

When in French and German speaking countries, and to a lesser extent Spanish speaking countries, I try to use the local language as much as possible. This is usually appreciated by the locals, who are often quite bemused by this big blond guy, what is he, German? Dutch? Scandinavian? anything but English.

JimB

JimB said:

English has become the de facto international language, that makes us lazy.

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True, but as we're interested in Electronics it makes it even lazier, as the International language of Science is English.

When my daughter spent a year as an intern at Chemalot, it's in the Netherlands, she worked for a German owned company, yet the 'official' language on site was English - if you want to be a scientist you basically have to speak English, and courses in many foreign countries are commonly taught in English for that reason. Even French Universities have started teaching some courses in English, as they struggle attracting foreign students with courses taught in French - and we know how anal the French are about using the French language

JimB said:

Serious? Moi?

Yes and no.

All the banter about the spanner is just that, banter.

One of the things which does grip my bits is the attitude of English speaking persons from the UK (and the USA) to learning and using other languages.
English has become the de facto international language, that makes us lazy.

When in French and German speaking countries, and to a lesser extent Spanish speaking countries, I try to use the local language as much as possible. This is usually appreciated by the locals, who are often quite bemused by this big blond guy, what is he, German? Dutch? Scandinavian? anything but English.

JimB

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Hi Jim,

Oh ok thanks for the clarification.

I took French in high school when everybody else was taking Spanish.
Later i learned some Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.
I found it fascinating that really learning a new language involves embracing the culture of the land along with it and learning about the people themselves too.

KeepItSimpleStupid said:

but 60,000 Pascals doesn't cut it.

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sure... 60kPa you will find scientific notation keeps all numbers between 0 and 9.9999999... which is simpler than keeping all numbers between 0 and 100.
if you ever try to read old photocopied schematics, and attempt to differentiate between 0.0001 uf and .00001 uf, or 4.7k and 47k, you will see why the use of nf for capacitors, and notation like 4k7 were adopted.

as far as the zigzag vs box debate, i learned at an early age to read both, and the box for a resistor was a european schematic convention, while the zigzag was an american convention. the zigzag convention arises from early resistors being wirewound types.

Nigel Goodwin said:

It really depends where they live, while they do English at school it doesn't mean they are any good at it - I did French at school, and am useless at it

My daughter lives in the Netherlands now, and 'generally' English is widely spoken - particularly in Amsterdam. However, where she lives is close to the German boarder, so their second language tends to be German rather than English - I went to a small Radio Museum there, and the guy who runs it doesn't speak any English at all, and was very excited to have an English visitor.

My daughter is currently leaning Dutch, and due to take her exam later this year - essentially a high school Dutch qualification.

Her brother-in-law failed his English at school, and this was limiting his work potential, he works in a clothing store and you can't get promoted with out having the high school English qualification. Melissa and her Husband helped him with his English, and he retook it and passed OK - he now manages the store.

When we popped in to Germany last year we didn't find much English been spoken - but again, it's not the sort of area where you're likely to.

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Nigel, so it was back around the early 80s while I was living in Ital;y. We loved taking trips up to Garmisch, Germany which is about an hour from Munich. So we are trying to find a McDonalds and we pulled up to a very nice young girl and my buddy tried his awful German asking for directions. She looked at us, smiled nicely and said "you go straight two blocks and turn left, you can't miss it, it will be on the right". Before Europe I was mostly Pacific Rim and quite a bit of Japan. I remember Japan early 70s and learning English was mandatory in their schools. Each country I lived in I tried to learn enough of the language to get by and be polite, I also made it a point to learn the laws and customs in my host countries. I have never forgotten that day in Germany and the McDonald's hunt.

Ron

Reloadron said:

We loved taking trips up to Garmisch, Germany which is about an hour from Munich. So we are trying to find a McDonalds and we pulled up to a very nice young girl and my buddy tried his awful German asking for directions. She looked at us, smiled nicely and said "you go straight two blocks and turn left, you can't miss it, it will be on the right".

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A friends brother lives in Germany, married a German girl, and has High School age children.

Anyway, they got their school reports and both had fairly poor marks in English Oral, which upset him as the kids are obviously bi-lingual. So he went to see their teacher to query it, and she explained they don't speak English 'properly' - to which he replied that THEY do, but YOU don't. They were marked down for not speaking English with a German accent

Similar things happen here as well, one of my daughters ex-boyfriends was half German, and lived with his German mother - every year during the summer holidays they used to go back to Germany for 5-6 weeks, where he spoke nothing but German. He came to his German A Level (exams at 18 years old, pre-cursor for University) and scored poorly on his German Oral test, again because he spoke it 'properly' and not with an English accent - it didn't help that he actually has a regional accent from the area of Germany his mother came from.

My daughter's Dutch is coming along quite well, she posted a picture on Facebook the other week of one of her pet rats looking at her 'Dutch Irregular Verbs' book - apparently everyone says she sounds like the Dutch Queen, probably because the Queen isn't Dutch, so has had to learn it as a foreign language as well.

Thanks for sharing that Nigel. I speak English with a pronounced New York City accent.

Ron

my german teacher in high school's regional dialect was "suddeutsch" (southern german)... her joke was "and that doesn't mean you say 'guten tag y'all'".

she would mark people down for pronouncing "ich" as "ish" because a) "ish" is a lazy way of pronouncing "ich", and b) "ish" is also the suddeutsch pronounciation, and she was teaching us hochdeutsch (proper german).