I started reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea this morning and after five pages I was ready to chuck it at Jules Verne's head, due to the fact that I had to stop every 30 seconds to convert feet to meters in my head, in the part at the very beginning when it mentions a bunch of different estimates of the sea monster's length and width, and how high it can squirt water and how big all the ships are and so on.
Has anybody published a metric version of that book? Because if not, I have absolutely no intention of reading it.
I found this while searching for a metric version of the book (I didn't find any, it's probably considered butchering a classic or something). Read that, it's good. Yes, metric isn't as poetic, but don't you think "foot" is a bit of an ugly name? Or "inch". It sounds like bug, except no one ever thinks about it because they're so used to hearing it. What about "pound"? It has a nice ring to it, but overall it's kind of weird as well. Pound. Poooound. Powwwwnd.
Aside from these exceptions, especially "foot" and inch", imperial sounds nicer: ounce, mile, pint. Yard. League.
Oh, another one I don't like is "stone". It makes me think of a bunch of cavemen lugging around a great big rock.
2 comments:
oi! I answered your comment about Amelia on my blog, if you wanna see it.
www.meserralde.blogspot.com
Who the hell does he think he is? The Earth is only 12,742km wide so any more than puts his sub in low Earth orbit.
Post a Comment