From: Ellen K. 

Ha, I remember the first time I weighed myself in Germany... the scale said
"pounds" (ok, Pfund) and I thought I had lost a bunch of
weight!!!

On Mon, 03 May 2004 23:25:28 +0200, Jan van Hoek (NL)
 wrote in message
:

>>> ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
>>> (I don't know the metric version but the idea is the same)
>
>Not to worry. In our country we are "metric" for more than half a
>century, but such expressions survive without a problem.
>
>In Dutch we still say: een ons geluk is beter dan een pond verstand
>(literally translated: an ounce of happiness is better than a pound of
>intelligence). These officially dropped measurements are still used in
>shops and on the market. It may have something to do with the fact that
>our "ons" (=100 grams) is not the same as your
"ounce", and that our
>"pond" (=500 grams) is not the same as your "pound"
(please note that
>these measurements were metric all along, which may have helped their
>survival).

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