length, not depthstresspenguinDecember 20 2008, 19:10:48 UTC
From our good friends at Wiki...
"The title refers to the distance traveled under the sea and not to a depth, as 20,000 leagues is over 12 times the radius of the earth. The greatest depth mentioned in the book is 4 leagues. A literal translation of the French title would end in the plural "seas", thus implying the "seven seas" through which the characters of the novel travel. However the regular English translation of the title uses "sea", meaning the ocean in general, as in "going to sea"."
And don't forget, a French league in his time could have been anything between 2.02 to 2.9 miles (before they went standard metric), not 3.5 like the British league or 3 miles like a U.S. league. Verne wrote the novel in 1870, well before they knew the maximum depth of the ocean, so all things considering, 4 leagues deep isn't to far off.
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"The title refers to the distance traveled under the sea and not to a depth, as 20,000 leagues is over 12 times the radius of the earth. The greatest depth mentioned in the book is 4 leagues. A literal translation of the French title would end in the plural "seas", thus implying the "seven seas" through which the characters of the novel travel. However the regular English translation of the title uses "sea", meaning the ocean in general, as in "going to sea"."
And don't forget, a French league in his time could have been anything between 2.02 to 2.9 miles (before they went standard metric), not 3.5 like the British league or 3 miles like a U.S. league. Verne wrote the novel in 1870, well before they knew the maximum depth of the ocean, so all things considering, 4 leagues deep isn't to far off.
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Me too. But not for the same reasons.
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