A commenter on an article on clothes sizes is angry about the UK use of stones to refer to a person’s weight:

I really do wish you Brits would stop using this bizarre measure of weight the stone. You do realize that nobody else in the rest of the world knows what the hell this means. I’ve lived 30 years in foreign countries, speak 3 foreign languages fluently, am at home in both the metric and non-UK imperial systems, and can convert effortlessly between a dozen different currencies, but I throw up my hands at this stone nonsense. Even looking it up and learning that 1 stone equals 14 lbs doesn’t make it any more comprehensible. Do you people really tell each other that your 183 lb body weighs 13.07 stone, or is everything rounded off to the nearest 14 lbs?

Reactions vary.

Is everything OK in other areas of your life Zerosum?

Zerosum,
It’s seems that I’m the only person that understands you.
The issue here isn’t stones or pounds.
What’s important for people to know is that you speak three languages, fluently, . lived for 30 years in foreign countries and can effortlessly convert 20 different currencies at one time.

Later note: here’s an American review of the Ottolenghi cookbook from amazon.com:

I bought this book as a gift for my wife. She’s a former professional chef and caterer, and now a superb home cook. These recipes are sensational across the board. Especially notable are the chicken w/ sumac, za’atar & lemon, as well as the marinated turkey breast w/ cumin, etc. However, there is a challenge for us Americans because the measures are metric and the temps are in celcius. This book is published in England. Didn’t the Brits invent our system of standard measure? Anyhow, it’s worth the trouble for me to convert these recipes for her because these dishes are outstanding.

Yes, it should have been converted if it was a US publisher. But I find this some compensation for the irritation I always feel on reading recipes measured in CUPS. A cup of butter! I certainly hope they didn’t get that from us.

Still later note: I have heard that Americans don’t usually possess scales. Amy describes some here:

I use a digital kitchen scale practically every day. If you’re serious about baking or developing recipes, it’s a necessity. You may notice some of the more professional baking cookbooks show the weights of ingredients. It’s a much more accurate way to measure than by using cups and spoons. When I develop a recipe using an ingredient like fish or chicken, I specify the weight because it makes a big difference in cooking time and also in terms of servings. For example, a salmon steak could be as small as 6 ounces or over a pound.

The online service Wahl-O-Mat is available in German and English.

You give your opinion (agree/neutral/disagree) to 38 theses, then you weight the ones you find important double, then choose up to 8 parties with which your results can be compared.

My highest match was the Pirate Party, second-highest Greens, and lowest CDU/CSU (second-lowest SDP!). I can’t vote, however, as I’m not German.

It’s no longer November 2008, but this, a combined effort by Soko Leipzig and The Bill, is just being shown. I think it was done in English, as I heard a bit on YouTube, and the German police had German accents, although whether the actors were dubbed I don’t know.

I abandoned it out of frustration when the name of the kidnapped girl (played by Ulrich Mühe’s daughter), Charlotte, was used to distinguish Brits and Germans. The Germans pronounced it Sharlotta, of course, but the British said Charlot, with a ch at the beginning, as in Charles. That is the way the Germans think the British pronounce Charlotte, as they often believe Chicago starts, but in fact it is Sharlet, a bit like Scarlet, with a schwa at the end. So much for collaboration!

Hitler finds out about another Downfall parody

It’s good that other translation blogs work when I don’t get round to it.

Fabio Said has a post on how to create your own library in Google Books for terminology search. The post is even in English: Searching terminology with Google Books

The trick is quite simple: if you have a Google account, you can build a digital “library” from books you find on Google Books. Whenever you find an interesting book, you can add it to your custom library, which automatically makes your books searchable. But that, of course, will only work if the books you select have preview capabilities, i.e. if they can be viewed entirely or with limitations.

More there, including a link to Fabio’s own Google library.

I am using Google Books more and more for terminology research, so I will be looking into this.

Die Zeit recommends corned beef for Labskaus, although it says salt beef is traditional, minced. Fortunately the corned beef comes from a tin (in Germany you can buy an inferior kind of corned beef, pronounced cornid beef, from delicatessen counters).

(Wikipedia picture of ‘Hamburg-style Labskaus with fried egg, gherkin and rollmops’)

Scouse, the Liverpool dialect, has the same origin. Wikipedia:

The word Scouse was originally a variation of “lobscouse”[2], the name of a traditional dish of Scouse made with lamb stew mixed with hardtack eaten by sailors. Alternative recipes have included beef and thickened with the gelatin sauce found in cowheel or pig trotter in addition to various root vegetables. Various spellings can still be traced, including “lobscows” from Wales, and some families refer to this stew as “lobby” rather than scouse, as in the Potteries (Stoke-on-Trent), where a ‘bowl of lobby’ is a welcome meal on a cold winter’s night. In Leigh, between Liverpool and Manchester, there is even a “Lobby shop”. The dish was traditionally the fare of the poor people, using the cheapest cuts of meat available, and indeed when no meat at all was available scouse was still made, but this “vegetarian” version was known as “blind scouse”.[citation needed] The term remained a purely local word until its popularisation in the sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, which some also believe to have introduced stereotypes about Liverpudlians. It is also thought that there may once have been a giant man that came from the area called “Jon Scouse”.[3]

Here’s something about the Hamburg variety in English. Pictures of scouse can also be found via the Google image search.