[brc]

The sole advantages of imperial units over metric units is that they are easier and faster to say.

50 miles is a ton less syllables than 50 'kilometers' an inch is much easier to say than '2 centimetres'

What would immensely improve the metric system would be recognised, single-syllable slang words for every measurement unit. A lot of native-metric-english speakers try, they say 'mil' for millilitres, they say 'kays' for kilometres, but you're still left with either awkward decimal points or excessive syllables.

I am 'one point eight three metres' tall, or 'one hundred and eighty three centimetres'. Or I am 'six feet'. Guess which gets used most?

The curse of the metric is the endless tongue-twisters.

[lmm]

Compare equivalent accuracy. "one hundred and eighty three centimetres" is not noticeably more complex than "five feet seven and a half inches". And you have the option of "eighteen decimeters" if that's the level of accuracy you want - try inventing an intermediate unit on the fly with imperial.

[brc]

But you wouldn't go down to a half-inch, and there is a shortcut - '5 foot 7'. I'm not referring to accurate measurements, but the sort of day-to-day, rounded off measurements that pepper our daily speech.

If I said a decimeter to any of my friends, they would have no idea what I was talking about.

[lmm]

> there is a shortcut - '5 foot 7'

You can say "1 meter 83", and people do.

> If I said a decimeter to any of my friends, they would have no idea what I was talking about.

Well, mine would - and any who didn't could easily figure it out. If you're willing to memorize all the random names the imperial units have, you can afford to remember "deci".