Frankly, the -er is better based on actual English pronunciation rules. The -re ending comes from French and is less compatible with how most of the rest of English is pronounced.
And I can't say I've ever been confused by these two different meanings of the word. Can you even come up with an example sentence illustrating ambiguity here?
Ooh, that first bit suggests you're in danger of suggesting there's a coherent, sensible, set of rules for English ... which I'm sure you don't really subscribe to. Anyone adopting that position as a starting point is going to have a bad day, of course. : )
So, is 'er' better in terms of pronunciation? Perhaps, though I don't think that matters much, as pronunciation varies so wildly based on country, region, education, etc, plus there's so much inconsistency with spelling -> pronunciation within English that I think it's fair to say that ship has long since sailed.
In terms of writing however there's a huge advantage to having words with different meanings have different spellings. I assume I don't have to pitch that idea terribly hard?
For us non-Americans I suspect the frustration boils down to having a recalcitrant nation stubbornly refusing to join the rest of the metric world while simultaneously poisoning the language well of metric unit names everyone else is already using.
Frankly, the -er is better based on actual English pronunciation rules. The -re ending comes from French and is less compatible with how most of the rest of English is pronounced.
And I can't say I've ever been confused by these two different meanings of the word. Can you even come up with an example sentence illustrating ambiguity here?