UK here. I can still remember my father, who retired over forty years ago, complaining about his (younger) fellow teachers who were still talking in imperial. "If somebody my age can change to metric, what's wrong with the youth of today!?" And we're still doing it; who understands his weight in kilos? In fact, who understands his weight in lbs, the American way? Both of these require translation into the everyday English of tons (not tonnes! Notice how those sneaky metricians tried to steal OUR unit?), cwts, stones, lbs and oz. And you'll get recipes calling for 200g of one ingredient and 4 oz of another... And our speed limits are delineated in mph, not kph. And standard measures of beer are still in multiples of a pint. To the OP, you're fine in both instances. "Miles to the next town" is fine.
I think out of all the conversions to metric I've needed to switch around in sci-fi, the one that always looks & sounds the strangest to me is when I'm mentioning someone's height. If I mention something is a few meters long. It looks okay. But if I say "He's about 180 centimeters" it just looks bizarre to me.
Probably because - at least for yanks like you and I - when you see that measure and your brain tries to engage it in a way that it can visualize and compare to other things, you get: FILE NOT FOUND. It's an empty file reference. It's meaningless because you can't visualize it. Just as @Shadowfax said (a person who lives in a metric country) "..who understands his weight in kilos?" And it doesn't matter whether it's Imperial or Metric. What matters is if it's a measure you use often enough that you can see it or feel it in you mind. I can tell you that I weigh just a tad over 12 stone, another Imperial unit, but we do not ever use that measure in America, so without googling it and calculating how many lbs. that is, can you get a feel for my weight with that number? Can you visualize if I'm a little guy or a big guy? Probably not.
What are you talking about? If we're making an unusual sandwich, forget to the PB & J, skip the chawanmushi (as sweet & savory as it is), and go right into ebi tenpura covered in a sweet nitsume sauce. Can you imagine how wonderful a sandwich that would be? The sweet, the crunch, the tender meat, just utter perfection? I mean sure, it'd be better surrounded in rice, equally smothered in nitsume〜 but depending on the bread in question, it could work But as this is technically unrelated to the topic in question, I should probably shut up about it now
Chawanmushi is an egg "custard" thing cooked in a teacup usually with a small piece of chicken, a slice of kamaboko--puréed fish cake, and a small ebi--shrimp. Tenpura is a style of battering & frying fish or vegetables. Nitsume is a sweet sauce used for shrimp or eel or ocotopus or special style of cooked fish. PB & J is an abbreviation of peanut butter & jelly, an American delicacy of spreading both these ingredients on different slices of bread then combining both into the ultimate flavour experience in your mouth. Bread is baked flour, water, & yeast or something--this has always eluded me, but I partake of it fairly regularly. There is this style called "sourdough" which is delightful, particularly with roast-beef. Rice comes from a plant of some sort & my family tends to eat it was 86% of our meals as a side dish. I can't really explain this either; I usually just eat it (particularly the one that is bleached)
Yea ... I kinda knew the PB & J thing. The bread was a little bit of a mystery, glad you cleared that up. Coincidently, here's a little from my current WIP A syringe came out along with a collection tube and a host of other sterile wrapped niceties. “Unfortunately,” the man said. “My employers weren’t specific last time. The blood Charles collected was contaminated with something called P nutbutter.” The brute behind him held his arm tight against the chair arm while the needle went into his elbow. He painfully wiggled the needle around in his quest for red-gold. “Now, I’ve never tasted such a thing, but I hear it’s yummy.” He pursed his lips into an exaggerated frown. “Sadly, Charles won’t be eating much of anything anymore.”
When it comes to figures of speech, I wouldn't convert imperial to metric. 'If I give him an inch he'd take a mile' sounds more natural than 'if I give him a centimetre he'd take a kilometre', but this might work in a futuristic science fiction setting. You could get around quoting specific heights and distances by using terms like 'he was a little over average height' and 'it was a two hour journey by high-speed train'. Such descriptions may be more meaningful to the reader. To quote a man's height as 180 cm is specific but he could be the tallest or shortest person in the scene, so even if the reader can visualise his height, it would still be meaningless unless you specify the heights of everyone else, but then you'd be loading the reader with much arbitrary information. Ask, 'what is the question to which the number is the answer?' then ask, 'is there a better answer to the question?'
Now I want to know what Shadowfax calls an inchworm? A pod challenged centipede perhaps? For doggiedude perhaps you need to tell us what measurement your aliens are using. If they are really big maybe a uuparsec (need a few more u modifiers I think).
Humans, Greys, Centurians, and Uldivarions. I just use metric because it just kinda makes sense given the grisly nature of war. Also it is a bit simpler than standard. Meter sounds more official than yard anyway.
I wrote a near future sci-fi with a Brit as the MC and I used metric measurements throughout, assuming that in a hundred years imperial measurements would no longer be used. However, that didn't stop the MC using, "inched forward" as a figure of speech.
I've lived here in Scotland for 30 years, after moving from the USA. So I've got a foot (as in "end of leg") in both camps. I'm now very used to centimetres and litres, but do struggle to visualise a kilometre. And I'm pretty good with grams, etc, but kilos don't quite register. I know that a 'stone' of weight is 14 pounds, but I wouldn't have a clue what I weigh in kilos. So it is fairly mixed. I'm glad I arrived here after they made the change from 'old money,' because when I hear people talking about pounds, shillings and pence, or see old money written up as something or other followed by 'd', I realise I escaped a lot of confusion. I still like the American coins better than the British ones, because they are simpler to use. Americans (and Canadians) regularly use only four coins: 1 cent 5 cents (a nickel) 10 cents (a dime) 25 cents (a quarter) ....although 50 cent coins do also exist. The British, on the other hand regularly use 8 coins: 1 pence 2 pence 5 pence 10 pence 20 pence 50 pence a one-pound coin a 2-pound coin The British coins are a LOT heavier to carry around, as well. They're very clunky compared to US coins. And making change is a lot more complicated as well. You know what I can NOT get used to? It's the British wall calendar. The week starts on a Monday and ends on a Sunday, instead of starting on Sunday and ending on Saturday. I tried to take this on board, but kept getting days wrong ...thinking something was happening on Wednesday, when it was actually Thursday. I gave up, and always have an American calendar on my wall. There is a limit to my adaptability!
I've been away too long. Is that something that was fairly recently introduced? I remember (because I lived in a border state) seeing lots of Canadian coins when I was young, but I don't remember a dollar one. The British only introduced the one and two pound coins a short while back. I certainly remember 1-pound notes when I first came here.
The loonie came in the 80s, I think, the toonie in the 90s. We only got rid of pennies in the last decade. ETA: We don't have $1 or $2 bills anymore, since they were replaced with coins.
Yeah, that's similar to the timescale of what happened here, converting the bills to coins. I honestly don't know why we have pennies any more, though. And certainly 2p pieces are rather silly, especially as they are quite large. We've now got bills in several denominations that are being made of plastic rather than paper. They are pretty, but also slippery. It's not so bad if you carry a purse or wallet, but if you just stuffed them in the pockets of your jeans, they could 'escape.' However, if you mistakenly put them through a load washing, they come out clean and unharmed! They seem very sturdy, but I've heard that if one gets a tiny slash in the side, they'll tear in half like nobody's business. No, I've not been tempted to test THAT.
Yeah, our bills are plastic, too. Took some getting used to, but apparently they're harder to counterfeit, and way more durable.
There was a recent story about a young kid with a medical problem that a trained dog could help, so he saved pennies to try to come up with the thousands of dollars needed to get the pooch. He did get the dog of course with help from many people as a result of his story making the national news. Those pennies count, specially the rare ones. Also there is an old sci-fi show where they used pennies to power some alien ray gun to defeat the aliens themselves - of course that was back in the day when pennies were made out of copper. And still a penny for your thoughts is popular, we are not deep thinkers over here in the colonies.
Also, nobody mentioned - in space - 'spending a penny.' Jackson spent a penny, zipped his luretex aprosoc protector and stepped back to the bridge section.
Okay, in for a penny, in for a pound; what is this reference you write of? Jannert seems to know so it must be UK thing. ... I think I get it now. Never mind.
US translation: Jackson spent a penny took a leak, zipped his luretex aprosoc protector and stepped back to the bridge section. ... This one is q.interesting as regards to our shared language. There's a film/book called 'We Were Soldiers Once' - which I haven't seen, but a big part of the film is the poem called Sgt. Mackenzie which I found myself enjoying on a wild Friday evening. The fun part is the 'English translation' on screen and the comments section re - Scots/English/Gaelic...& on. Poem's very moving tho' :/
