Measurements in fantasy

[Ray McCarthy]

By co-incidence looking for info on Norse money (they seem at first to have not really believed in it in the sense other people did)
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/measurement.shtml

( On money: see BBC also
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/vikings/money_01.shtml

The Norse of the Viking age did strike coins, but their basic mode of exchange was "hack silver" - ie. small bars that could be carried and easily cut ("hacked") to the size they needed.

This was because the Norse did not use a face value currency like we do. The value of both their coins and their hack silver was determined by weight. Quite a few very fine scales have been found in Norse merchant centres like Birka that attest to this practice.

Coins were stuck to guarantee the purity of the silver, to spread the "name fame" of the king who had them struck, and to gain legitimacy - striking coins was something English and continental rulers did.)

 

[Mirannan]

I think the attitude to take may be that any fantasy or SF story (except very near future SF) is translating some original written by a native. It's fairly obvious, for example, that a story set in Imperial Rome ought to have all the characters speaking Latin or maybe Greek (which was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire) but such a story would be difficult to write for most authors, and have a very limited market. Similarly, it is very unlikely that the language spoken by people of several thousand years in the future would resemble today's English very much, even if said language is derived from English. Aliens are even less likely to be speaking English.

Similar remarks apply to units of measurement. Using exotically named units which have no clear relationship to real-world ones is, IMHO, needlessly obscuring the point.

Incidentally, Tolkein made this point in some of the appendices of LOTR. He actually put in a few words of Westron, the common tongue of Middle Earth, to make the point.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Tolkein made this point

Also though, he obviously really liked Potatoes and Tobacco.
... he did claim that Middle Earth is Europe very long ago!

 

[Ogma]

If you need it to be different, though, for your world to work, then you should change it. But there's a good chance that your readers will have to go "a centon? Uh... oh, yeah, that's either a week, a mile, or a kilogram. Probably a week from context. OK, I think I'll keep reading".

I have read a couple of books where exactly this happened. Trying to work out such schmeerps from context can be an absolute minefield. If a character says they waited two fulps, were they seconds, minutes, hours and some drink they imbibed to pass the time?

Really, unless there's a significant reason to change time units, I wouldn't bother. In Medieval settings, as Brian said, I avoid seconds and minutes.

I think the attitude to take may be that any fantasy or SF story (except very near future SF) is translating some original written by a native. It's fairly obvious, for example, that a story set in Imperial Rome ought to have all the characters speaking Latin or maybe Greek (which was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire) but such a story would be difficult to write for most authors, and have a very limited market. Similarly, it is very unlikely that the language spoken by people of several thousand years in the future would resemble today's English very much, even if said language is derived from English. Aliens are even less likely to be speaking English.

Similar remarks apply to units of measurement. Using exotically named units which have no clear relationship to real-world ones is, IMHO, needlessly obscuring the point.

I totally agree with this.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

schmeerps

That's a drink made by distillation of fermented sheep.

 

[Mirannan]

I'd like to make the linguistic drift point a bit more strongly. What would someone in the 1900s make of the words laser, radar, flash (in the computer context), RAM (except of course for male sheep!), hoover, twerking, deejay, or download? And that's just over a hundred years. For example, the world of Dune is around 10,000 years in the future. Transported there, one might as well be trying to learn Xhosa. Or worse. The words I started with refer to things either not conceived of, or in their infancy, in 1900.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I was just watching a female blackbird in the shrubs while I was eating tea. Or it might have been a thrush (I only saw the back). I considered USA has standard coffee cups (we don't), a USA baking cup measure is different to a cup here and used for things we always weigh. Gallon in US is different, US I think uses many imperial or imperial named units that aren't used in UK at all any more.
But while a recipe might fail, we have a rough idea of the amount of a "cup".

But it doesn't matter. The US has birds with same names as UK/Ireland that are not actually the same bird. Chocolate made with bitter milk (treated so it doesn't ferment I think) ... etc. US uses "pounds" for people, we use Stones or Kilogram.

So SF & F Fantasy is like reading US stuff for Europeans. The things all have familiar names and it doesn't matter that's not exactly the same thing (i.e. SF & F Fantasy: "tea" = infused leaves, "coffee" =roasted & ground, "beer" = fermented grain, "wine" = fermented fruit, "chicken" = a medium avian like creature bred for table, "pint" = Fantasy drink, "1/2 Litre" = SF drink etc.)

So we use words the reader is familiar with.

computer

Up to 1950s a Computer was mostly a person that computed stuff.

 

[KyleAW]

My humble opinion, just use normal, well-known measurements.

There is no reason to over complicate things that are not central to the story and it risks confusing you when writing and your audience when reading.

Each section that explains why you felt the reader should understand the length of the day, in relation to your construct of 'hours' is time that I think could be better spent getting invested in the story.

Just my two cents.

 

[DPWright]

I tend to stick with what I am comfortable with and suits the genre. For instance my current writing tends to be dark future, really entrenched in noir, so I have stuck with old school measurements - feet, inches etc. I just lobe the retro feel to it and gives my writing a more gritty feel. But use whjatever measurements you want - they will not be the braking of your story - your writing will be the measuring stick of success.

Oh yea - one important thing though - BE CONSISTENT! During your edit make sure your measurements are all from the same 'type' - inches and feet or centimetres or metres....

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I'll echo the rest. For distance I usually use leagues feet and yards. And for time I'll use bells - the idea being that a bell was an hour give or take but since no-one had watches the regular tolling of the bell had to do.

I did once - for Maverick - change weeks for tendays - but have regretted it ever since. Especially now when I have a half done sequel in the works. It just doesn't sound right.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

change weeks for tendays

Yes, I know the temptation and feeling on that.

 

[Dave]

Specifically, on measurements of length - they all relate to the human or equine body parts - an inch is a thumb length, a foot is a foot length, a yard is the fingertip to elbow. The larger distances being how much you could plough or walk. If your society is rural and has humanoids, then it is going to have very similar systems of measurement. Give them alternative names if you like, but the sizes themselves will be similar.

Regarding Time measurements - they all relate to astronomical periods - time the Earth turns, orbits the Sun, the Moon and the tides. Again, in a rural society, these measurements were vital to growing and harvesting, so unless you are on another planet the sizes cannot be changed; the names can.

Base 10 is because we have ten fingers. The Mayans counted on their toes and used Base 20, but unless your humans have six fingers and toes then you are going to use Base 10.

As Ray pointed out, weights are more complicated, but still dependent on what a man or oxen could carry, and the weight of the volume of a barrel.

 

[Denise Tanaka]

I suppose the question I'd ask you is: Is there ever going to be a moment in your writing where having different minutes or different numbers of minutes actually needs to be mentioned? So unless you need to make these measurements radically different from what we experience them and this is a plot point, then perhaps there's no need to worry about this?

I'll echo that. If you have a lot of spare time and want to fill up thick notebooks with all sorts of charts and tables, be my guest. But a reader won't keep it all straight and it becomes a distraction. In my original universe, I avoid specifics whenever possible. It is a very modern thing to be worried about the time or exact measurements.

 

[WaylanderToo]

Base 10 is because we have ten fingers. The Mayans counted on their toes and used Base 20, but unless your humans have six fingers and toes then you are going to use Base 10.

there is a joke in there about various areas in the UK and US - but I'll forebear for the time being

Back on topic however... In fantasy I really don't see a problem with using inches/cm, yards/metres and miles/km as everyone in the world can relate to that and that grounds it and helps people appreciate large (or indeed small) distances. If you're dead set against 'modern' usages just give a 'translation' matrix at the from (eg 1 mile is the equivalent to 3/4 of groal). Again in fantasy (or indeed medieval settings) rather than use seconds you could use "a count of 5 (breaths)" though if you're talking about something happening then again use seconds/minutes if it's not from a character p.o.v.

 

[HareBrain]

an inch is a thumb length, a foot is a foot length, a yard is the fingertip to elbow

Thumb width, maybe. And fingertip to elbow is a cubit.

Actually the relationship between imperial measurements and body parts is rather complex and not at all certain, but they do seem to fit the human proportions much better than the metric system, which, though neat and logical, is pretty much an abstraction.

I'd be interested to know what measuring system writers of Medieval fantasy use in countries that use the metric system (and haven't used pre-metric in living memory). Do they go back to pre-metric measurements that their readers might be unfamiliar with, or stick with metric, or what?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

There are still the French, German, Italian etc pre-metric things, but people would only know a few of them. I'll ask my German connections.

USA is the least Metric country of UK, Ireland despite deciding to adopt it in theory over 50 years ago.
As to why USA didn't adopt Metric instead of Colonial British Imperial after 1799 is mystery.
The USA might be the only non-metric country in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system

The metric system has been officially sanctioned for use in the United States since 1866, but it remains the only industrialised country that has not adopted the metric system as its official system of measurement.

It's also odd how slow it has been in UK, I think even in 1960s too much teaching of imperial units obsolete even then (I remember chains and furlongs as well as metres in school). UK scientists were instrumental in bringing in many changes and new units to Metric as it adapted to be S.I.
Roads here in Ireland were strange as distances on signs gradually changed from Miles to km, but the change on speed limits and speed limit signs was much later and basically overnight. Some very old signs even in 1980s in N.I. and Ireland had the longer Irish miles, presumably because they used some old table of distances when putting up the fingerboards in 1920s.

 

[KyleAW]

Most readers will have an idea of what your measurements amount to. That said it might be better to stay vague surely? Unless it really matters 'midday' or 'half a days travel' is all the reader often cares about. How often does a character read the scales out loud to tell the reader when exactly a weight is? Or measure something with a ruler?

I know we have moved on a little to discussing metrics/imperial but returning to the original discussion I honestly think constancy and simplicity are the goals to strive for.