What unit of measurement do you think works best for the magical land of Equestria? I've seen some people use things like 'hooves' or 'ponylengths' as the base unit of measurement, but aside from being vaguely ridiculous that comes with the problem that it doesn't really clue the (not-a-pony) reader in as to the size of the object/distance being described. The imperial system is stupid and arbitrary, as well as making no sense in Equestria - 'feet' tends to clash with the whole setting. The metric system would seem to be the best choice generally, but what do you lot think? Are there any examples from the show that I'm forgetting, and if so, should they be ignored?

5032642 I generally use "paces" because it's vauge enough to be Equestrian but specific enough to be indentifiable by the readership. But that's just me. If you're going to do something unique, I'd suggest some sort of pun on imperial and metric measurements, if you can pull one off. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.

5032642 centimeters, meters etcetera.

5032642 Rarity mentioned miles in "Look before you sleep":

5032642 You could use tail lengths.

5032642

Feet, miles, inches and centimeters are mentioned in canon. There is no coherent reason to prefer one over the other, and 'hooves' are a purely fanon invention.

That said, you could always go exotic and use the FFF system, ponies do kind of sound like the type to use furlongs as customary units and metric system for science and engineering. :)

5032642 As a guy studying engineering, I hate anything that isn't metric. Imperial system sucks. It's probably why I've never ever used it for anything halfway scientific, either when I was still living in Scotland, when I was in France, and when I moved to Uni in Nottingham.

However, I've kinda found that it's more poetic, I guess. 'A million miles away' always struck me as more pleasant to hear than '1609344 kilometers away'. I've also referenced feet, too, despite ponies not having any. There's a reason for this, aside from them being referenced in the show (and I know they are, because there was an eight foot candy cane).

Unless I'm getting into a very nitty-bitty part of a story, I want my measuring units to above all be understood by the reader clearly and efficiently. If I use, say, miles in a story, scientifically speaking that could mean anything. A mile in Equestria could be any length. But what it'll make people think of in a story is the traditional mile length. People will think that it'd take roughly the same amount of time for a pony walking as it would for a human walking it, which is exactly what I want.

It also means I don't have to come up with some ponified unit of measurement which maybe only I will understand. When it comes to measurement, I want clarity above all else (which is why I prefer SI units in my course) so using a standardized unit that crops up a lot in stories strikes me as a safe bet. I don't typically want my readers pondering how big or how long something is: I want them to get the gist of it right away.

5032642
I prefer using horse or farm related units of measurement.

Examples of measuring length & Distances derived from when Earth ponies farmed and plowed the field:

Hooves = 4 in
Length = 96 hooves
Rod = 2 lengths
Furlong = 40 rods
Acre = 10 furlongs
Ponygang = 15 acres
Virgate = 2 ponygangs
Carucate = 4 virgates

Something I made up for the lols, in reality, the show just uses systems familiar to the viewer to get viewers to relate to them, so just do what I did and make something up that makes sense. The world is your canvas.

5032642 Good question.

Where I live we use metric for (pretty much) everything -- but I feel it would be too much of an immersion breaker to use it in a ponyfic. Part of that is probably an impression that traditional units are what goes with the English language, making the sudden introduction of a metric measurement sound like Poirot speak (since most of my practical exposure to written English has been on the internet, in an America-originated cultural space). But it's also that the tech level of Equestria is pretty consistently "make everything as old-timey as it can be and still allow your plot to work", and metric feels too modern for that.

Feet have been mentioned casually in the show, but I would be careful with that too, because horses don't have them. It going to rattle the immersion of at least some of your readers.

In general I think the best solution is to ask yourself: Does your story really need a precise measurement there? It's excellent for you as the author to have a clear idea of the dimensions of the room, where in it the ponies are and so forth, but do you really need the reader to spend the mental energy to recreate your scene in his head in that much detail? Most times you will find you don't.

And in most of the times where dimensions are important to the plot, you can state how it influences the plot rather than the numerical value. Instead of

The path through the swamp was just one meter wide.

it reads better to say

The path through the swamp was just wide enough for the ponies to walk single file.

Where explicit lengths cannot be avoided, steps or paces (as also suggested by DaeCat) work resonably well. Pony lengths can work too, instead if you don't treat them as an actual unit -- "about twice as long as a pony" is less awkward than "two pony lengths". If everything else fails yards might be the least bad choice -- it's not as unhorsey as feet, and for us metric people a yard is close enough to a meter that we don't need to stop and convert units in the midst of a story.

I usually go for hoof widths for dimensions shorter than about a meter. For long distances, miles seem to work fine (the length of a mile in different countries' traditional systems can vary a lot too, so it's not as if great precision can be expected), but leagues also deserves some consideration, I think.

5032642 Definitely metric. I assume that every advanced civilization of sentient beings develops a system based on on scientific measurements, not body parts.

5032761

Accounting for the fact that a meter was originally defined as a fraction of a meridian on Earth, I hope? :)

5032771 Was more talking about temperature and mass, tbh. Definitions of both second and meter are a tad bit... Wonky.

5032761
That sounds a lot like saying Equestrian trains should definitely be electrified because every advanced civilization will realize that steam locomotives are inefficient and polluting ...

5032773
Funnily enough, the kilogram is even wonkier, being defined by an artifact. And the kelvin is either bafflingly arbitrary too (the number 273.16 being basically pulled out of the air), or derived from standard atmospheric pressure on Earth (in particular the boiling point of water at that pressure).

(A truly scientific system would normalize Boltzmann's constant to 1 and measure temperature in yoctojoules).

5032773

They could use measurements derived from a magical constant of some sort for those, actually. Like the speed of magic in vacuum, which doesn't have to be anywhere close to the speed of light.

5032761

Yet feet and pounds seem to have been advanced enough to put men on the Moon, land rovers on Mars that are still operating years later, and get the first flyby photographs of Pluto.

I've got nothing against SI: like all systems of measurement it works very well for people who've grown up with it. Much like the English language, which, like SI, is now used all over the globe.

But as a native English speaker, I hope I would never denounce another country as uncivilized because its inhabitants don't speak English. Granted some do, but I am not now nor have I ever been Donald Trump.

5032774
Metric system - 1799
Steam locomotive - 1804

So, yeah, metric system was used alongside steam locomotives.

Also, metric units are used all around the world, so they're easy to imagine, understand, and relate to your real life. Well, except for the US maybe.

5032780
Neither of that has any obvious bearing on whether Equestria with its as-oldtimey-as-possible tech aesthetics would use metric units.

5032785 No, we don't have certainty. But if that world is similar to ours, it is at least very probable.

5032789
Our world doesn't have an as-oldtimey-as-possible tech aesthetics.

5032776
The English system sucks. The time spent trying to learn it in school was a waste. Yes, you can technically do science and engineering stuff in any measurement system, but anybody who uses the English system instead of metric is wasting time and energy. This isn't about language, it's about efficiency. Though the reason the US hasn't officially adopted metric is distinctly Trump-like: It originated in France, and the US congress was on bad terms with France at the time, so refusing to go with the rest of the modern world and use the more efficient system was a way of pretending that the US was superior.

5032642
"My" Equestria uses the metric system.

[deleted - on further checking it turned out my facts were wrong]

5032874

And thank you for that concise illustration of exactly what I was talking about.

5033032
From what I saw, what you were talking about was ‘the English system is good enough’ (first paragraph) to which I reply that the metric system is verifiably more efficient, so it is superior; that ‘The metric system works very well for people who've grown up with it’ (second paragraph), to which I reply that it works very well for the people who learn it later, too, because it's so much more efficient, so it is superior; and that ‘the metric system is like the English language, and I wouldn't call people who speak other languages inferior’, to which I reply that they are not at all comparable, the English language is used widely for historical reasons and has no innate advantage over other languages when compared side by side, while the metric system is objectively superior to the English system, so the metric system is superior.

I followed this by pointing out that, even though you claim not to be like Donald Trump, you are holding on to a position that has its roots in Trump-like jingoism.

So what point of yours did I illustrate?

5033101

Actually I was talking about bigots.

5032761
No. I won't tell you which system you should use, but it is in fact canon that ponies use miles, feet, and inches ( 5032661 and 5032646 already pointed that out, but in these threads no one seems to actually listen, do they).

5032642
Personally, I use the US customary system, if only because I expect the majority of my audience to be from the US anyway Why make things more complicated? A ponified system would add flair I guess, but I see the danger of it becoming gimmicky and throwing the reader out of they story as they try to imagine how long twenty hoof lengths are or something like that.

5032642
While actual measurements are pretty infrequent, they do seem to most frequently be some form of English units (Miles, feet, inches), so on the occasion I need to use a unit of measurement, I keep it to that for consistency.

Though I wouldn't be surprised if it's changed in the translated versions for other parts of the world.

5032642
I've only heard imperial measurements on the show. But I would imagine you can use whatever measurements you want.

5032715
Ponies have feet. They just end in a single, hard toe instead of five soft ones. They still have the same bones and parts that make up a foot.

5033218
Did you seriously just call me a bigot for pointing out the objective truth that the English system sucks? Congratulations, you've lost all credibility.

5033521

Yes, yes I am.

For one thing, systems of measurement are as idiosyncratic to cultures as language, and an intolerance for another people's language is the mark of a bigot.

For another, the SI was deliberately designed as an expression of Francophone bigotry. It was instituted by the Revolutionary government of France, just before they kicked off their other big contribution to Western history, the Reign of Terror which killed as many French civilians at one time as the world had not seen since the Inquisition, and would not see again until the Vichy state--and both of those required foreign help (ah, la glorie!). The official meter bar was a chunk of platinum-iridium that sat in Paris until 1960, when an indestructible standard was instituted to keep a worldwide standard safe from marauding Germans, Russians, what-have-you (I have been unable to determine what happened to that chunk of precious metal while Herr Schickelgruber's folks were in town).

And why, I ask you, should a French standard be used in Russia and Spain, which were invaded by the French? Or in Africa and the Caribbean, which were colonized by the French? Wouldn't these people have a right to use their own systems of measurement, if they so desired?

Ah, you say, but what of that? The system is accepted by the locals and works well for them. Isn't that all that matters?

There you and I are in agreement.

5034075 Believe it or not, the idea of an approachable measuring system based on nature was more notably and initally explored by a flemish bloke. Steven something or other. Not the french.

And whilst yeah, loads of units can be adopted by nearly anyone, SI is based on easily recognizable happenings in nature. A lot of it revolves around water, actually, and it's not by coincidence (water being something that's pretty easy to find lying around). 100 Celsius is boiling temperature. Zero is freezing temperature. Kelvin is exactly the same as Celsius, but was introduced later as the idea of 'absolute zero' in temperature became more relevant. It starts arbitrary, but it's how it all comes together that's really impressive.

You might also be interested to know that one meter cube of water is coincidentally, 1000 kilograms. Quite literally anyone could have standardized their units to something that remained consistent throughout their entire system, but it was these guys who did it. There are lots of other handy elements to the system that make it approachable and universally understandable, and in a general sense, more convenient. I could go on and reference how their units of energy relate to their units of power and work and volume and density and how it all comes together seamlessly (or as good as) but you'd be much better off finding a university lecturer for it seeing as I cannot do it justice on my lonesome.

In short, there's a reason it's called the 'international system of units'. Being based on things around them, in nature, it's very hard to misunderstand. Not practical for all purposes, of course (using mach as a speed unit is more useful when dealing with high altitude, varying temperature, and high speeds, for example) but practical nonetheless.

And I don't know what you're trying to get at by referencing the Great Terror. I could list off dozens of examples of brutalities by virtually every civilization who had produced useful things, and it doesn't impact their usefulness in the slightest. If anything, it makes you sound a tad desperate, which is sad since you strike me as a person sound of mind. And the main reason Imperial units get sneered at by people is simply due to the fact that we have to deal with however bloody gallons and inches work.

Maybe if it were a stronger, more approachable system, we wouldn't have so many problems with it. I've ran out of the number of anecdotes engineers tell about the imperial system being a pain in the arse.

5034075

For one thing, systems of measurement are as idiosyncratic to cultures as language, and an intolerance for another people's language is the mark of a bigot.

I already explained why the comparison to language doesn't work. Apparently you can't read.

5034172 Actually I rather think the language argument does compare, although a tad more tenuously. Again, it comes down to approachability. Lots of languages follow lots of different rules, and as it happens, some are more easily picked up than others.

English is one of the most bastardized languages I can cite off the top of my head. It's got roots in latin (cause we got invaded by the romans), which also has roots in indo-european whotsit thingy (I'm not a great language history bloke). England and Britain had also been partially invaded (at different points in history) by the Germans (I think they were called Normans back then?) then the Vikings (in fact, I have a fair bit of Viking blood in me myself since they took parts of Scotland) and les francais (by Guillaume le Conquerant). This meant that people from all over western Europe had an easier time with it, since they had all managed to invade it at some point or another and make their mark on how we spoke.

And then of course western Europe decided to 'spread the love' as it were, but the fact remains that English is pretty approachable by lots of languages that have something to do with either Latin or Nordic languages (since they have something in common), and is as a rule of thumb simpler too.

I can't speak for Eastern languages, though, because quite simply I don't speak them. Their rules are so far removed from English's that there, you are correct: there truly is no comparison. For loads of other languages, though, I like to think there are. And yes, back in France we (we being myself, my German pals, my Belgian pals, a few Swill peeps and that one frencie who could actually speak english because I spend a decade teaching him) made fun of the French's ability to fail learning languages. All in good fun, of course. They made fun of us for being uncool.

5034172

I read your argument. Do you think I should accept it simply because you bothered to write it down?

Also, if simple arithmetic conversions cause you that much grief then you should switch majors. You'll never survive engineering in the wild. I say this as a EE with a umber of years' experience.

5034196

English is one of the most bastardized languages I can cite off the top of my head. It's got roots in latin (cause we got invaded by the romans), which also has roots in indo-european whotsit thingy (I'm not a great language history bloke). England and Britain had also been partially invaded (at different points in history) by the Germans (I think they were called Normans back then?) then the Vikings (in fact, I have a fair bit of Viking blood in me myself since they took parts of Scotland) and les francais (by Guillaume le Conquerant).

That's a bit confused.

The roots of the English spoken today come from the Germanic language spoken by the Anglo-Saxon peoples who either settled or invaded England between 450 and 650 AD. They came from somewhere in northern Germany (it is not entirely clear where) and displaced a Latin-based culture left by the (then collapsed) Roman empire, which itself turn had displaced an earlier Celtic culture. It's generally agreed that the Romans didn't leave much language after they were rolled over by the Anglo-Saxons.

Viking raids and settlements, as well as various not completely documented intermarriages and alliances between Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon ruling families, commenced between 800 and 1000, again roughly. They left some linguistic heritage, but it is not easily discernible because both groups spoke Germanic languages that hadn't diverged all that much by then.

The Norman conquest in 1066 is primarily responsible for the Romance element in today's English. The Normans descended from Vikings who had settled in what is today northern France by agreement with the Frankish kings. However, by the time duke William decided he was the rightful heir to the English crown after Edward the Confessor died childless, the Normans had long since gone native and adopted early French as their language. Once William had successfully argued for his claim to the throne (using the ever popular proof-by-military-might), he installed his compatriots in positions of power all over England, and French became the language of the English upper class for centuries thereupon. Eventually a lot of French vocabulary was absorbed by the Saxon vernacular.

There were no separate French invasion, except that a sequence of unsuccessful pretenders after the English and Scottish crowns merged were backed by the French (who had been Scotland's traditional allies before the merger, by the principle of enemy-of-my-enemy).

Throughout the period, of course, actual Latin words reached English directly (that is, no through Norman French) from the church and later the pan-European Latin-speaking intelligentsia.

5034418 That's a lot of language-y things.

I feel my point that the English language is a tad muddled stands, though. You'll have to forgive my rather muddy history knowledge. I do robots, not timelines. :P

5034256

I read your argument. Do you think I should accept it simply because you bothered to write it down?

No, but I think you should acknowledge it. I laid out why you can't simply compare measurement systems to language; you can't repeat your comparison without a rebuttal to my objection.

I don't give a crap what the origin of SI is. It is the accepted standard for science worldwide, not because it spread through imperialism (the way English did), but because scientists the world over looked at it and decided it was the better system. The part where it scales by magnitudes of ten is reason enough to use it over the English system. How many yards are in a mile? Most people have no idea even if they grew up with it. How many meters in a kilometer? 1000.

5034196
As far as I know, English isn't actually easier to learn than any other language. The metric/SI system is by far the easiest system of measurement. So no, I don't think the comparison works.

5033291
That's what I envision as well. The whole hooves>rod>furlong etc system was used until the ease of the metric system (especially in conversions) caused it go obsolete.

Although I imagine that it could still be found in places that still have a rich and pervasive agrarian society since it is what they are accustomed to.

I think I heard "hoofsteps" being mentioned one time.