on 3/24/2002 3:11 PM, M R at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> If different languages use different word then the
> term m/s (meters per second) is meaningless.
The symbol m/s ans the other SI symbols are not meaningless. Their meanings
are NOT determined by the words or language used to describe the unit. They
merely have the meaning assigned by CGPM. Therefore, it is not relevant
whether the unit name is spelled differently in other languages.
For example, the symbol "m" means metre even in languages where there is no
letter "m" at all.
This includes Greek, Russian, Parsi (Persian), Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese,
Chinese, Korean, etc. etc. These languages do not even have a letter "m".
(The Greek equivalent, mu, does not look like the Latin "m" at all, even
though the capital Greek mu is the same as the Latin "M".)
Still, in Greek and all those other languages, the symbol for metre is "m".
(It is not even absolutely correct to say "the symbol in those languages"
because the symbols are not "in" anyone's language. They are language
independent.)
The same is true if the word for a unit in some language begins with a
different letter than it does in English, French, etc. The only one I know
of is "chillometre" which I think is Italian for kilometre. The symbol is
"km" regardless. The "k" stands for the concept of kilo, whether or not the
prefix is spelled "kilo" in other languages. That is; "k" stands for
"thousand" regardless of how the prefix is spelled.
What else would you do? The alternative is using non-alphabetic
symbols like ! @ # $ % & ( + { " < etc. and probably other, newly made-up
symbols. There would need to be at least 16 just for the main prefixes from
10^-24 to 10^+24, and then there would need to be one for each f the seven
basic unit (like metres, seconds, kilograms) and every one of the many
derived unit with special names (like volts, pascals, newtons, etc.). What a
mess that would be!
It is true that those of us who speak one of the western European languages
are have some advantage because the symbols used are often the first letter
or two in the unit names in OUR languages and in our alphabet. But, isn't it
better to have symbols that are "logical" in some languages (even though not
all) than to have symbols that are not logical in any languages?
Regards, Bill Hooper
retired physics professor, Florida, USA
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"Simplification" begins with "SI"
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