The units the world still prices things in

Every culture measures land, gold and money in a unit of its own. Most of those units never made it into a metric table. This is where they are converted — and explained.

• Pyeong to square meters Korea prices apartments in a unit that is illegal in contracts — and 33% larger than the space you get

Why these and not a generic converter

A search engine will convert centimetres to inches for you. It will not tell you that a bigha changes size when you cross an Indian state line, that a tola is 11.6638 g and still sets the price of a wedding in Gujarat, or that the 34 in a Seoul listing is not the apartment you walk around in.

Those are the conversions that cost people money, and they are the ones nobody has written down properly.

What is coming

Land. Pyeong, tsubo, bigha, guntha, sotka, dunam, alqueire, manzana, Morgen.

Gold. Don, monme, tola, tael, troy ounce — and the price each one carries.

Numbers. Lakh and crore against million and billion. 万 and 億 against the Western scale.