[ivlad]

I acquainted with a guy at a conference in US and he was genuinely surprised I had no idea, how long US mile is. I explained him, we use metric system and his response was “but don’t you learn *the standard* system in ache school?” I did not know, how to respond.

[bmacho]

AFAIK USA people learn both systems in school. So it understandable if they are not aware that the rest of the world don't know about their system, miles, inches, feet, gallons, pounds, etc, unless they are into American culture (books, movies).

[pxc]

One of the things that USians are taught in school when they learn these two systems is that everyone else uses metric. We're typically taught it in our science classes, because even in the US, scientists still use predominantly (exclusively?) metric. It follows that there's no parallel reason for most foreigners to learn US imperial units, especially in an institutional setting like public school.

[JumpCrisscross]

> we use metric system and his response was “but don’t you learn *the standard* system in ache school?” I did not know, how to respond

It’s just a difference in travel and seniority. If you aren’t talking across continents there is no need to speak two languages.

[simiones]

> If you aren’t talking across continents there is no need to speak two languages

Continents have nothing to do with this. If you live in the UK and need to talk to people in the USA and Australia, you can be monolingual and still speak with people in three continents. If you live in Switzerland, you may need to speak 3 languages just to be able to talk with all your neighbors.