• PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Do Europeans really give their height in cm? You’d think they short hand it like to like 1.7m or whatever since height is one of those things that doesn’t really need to be exact and will change by a cm or so based on the kind of shoes you are wearing, or wearing shoes at all.

    • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      In my native language we say the equivalent of ‘one and eighty-five’ to refer to 185 cm of height, so basically we give it in meters.

    • none@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Unless you happen to be 2 meters tall, yes, you would give your height in cm. You might round it, but you’d never say you’re 1.8m tall.

    • Vaquedoso@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not European, but from a country that also uses the metric system. We give out our height in meters, as you said. Saying it in cm would be okey for medical reasons I suppose. Also there isn’t much difference in what unit you use, you just have to multiply/divide by 100, which is easily done in your head

    • PostingInPublic@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      176cm would be given as “eins-sechsundsiebzig” in German, literally translating to one six and seventy (yeah it’s backwards), which works exactly like currency.

    • unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      You always do it in cm wherever I’ve been. It’s either directly in cm, as in 172 cm or phrased in meters, as in 1.72 m. You cab say you’re around 170 cm tall or around 1.7 m tall, but the ‘default precision level’ is 1 cm

    • WoodenDing@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Germans do go with meters when talking about their height but they’ll give you two decimal places.

    • bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      When the metric system was introduced in the UK, the schools taught decimeters, decameters and hectometers, not knowing that no one would ever bother with those.

    • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You can round it to 10’s or 5’s.

      My licence says 183 cm. I’ll usually say 180.

      Edit: so the cartoon guy would probably just say 190cm