The one that gets me is they bitch about calling the season Fall. They claim that Americans are so basic and stupid that we can only think to name the season after the leaves falling. They think that the name Autumn (which we also use), borrowed from French, is a far better name for the season.
First of all, we get it. You have your nose firmly up the collective asses of the French, Britain. It's a very pretty language, but maybe you could stop butchering their language for 5 minutes if you're going to be criticizing others for their English.
Second, you are the ones who came up with the name "Fall", Brits. Fall is indeed short for "The Fall of the Leaf". That term predates the US entirely, by almost two centuries, at least. And while you may think to judge us for continuing to use such an obvious name, I have bad news. Because you still use its complement, Spring, short for "The Spring of the Leaf". Say what you will about American English, but at least, in this, we're consistent.
A friend of mine from my TV days was working in South Africa when they hosted the association football World Cup and wound up talking to a woman who worked for the Football Association (the sport’s governing body in England and the reason the sport is called association football). She was angrily insisting to him that Americans invented the name “soccer” and that it never had that name in England. She might have been inebriated, but that was a lot to be confidently incorrect about her own employer.
Mr.Webster of dictionary fame decided to only use Aluminum in his publication so that took over.
The bigger player here is probably Charles Martin Hall, who invented* a cheap method of refining it. Turns out yeah, if it's marketed and sold as aluminum in the US that's what people will know it as.
Although I guess it is possible Webster's dictionary influenced Hall's naming choice.
I wouldn't mind if we went back to calling it alumium, though.
* as a sidenote, also invented in France in the same year (coincidence) by Paul Héroult, thus called the Hall-Héroult process
IIRC the -ium ending denotes a place of origin. I.e Magnesium was first find in Magnesia. Now, the Brits thought the -ium ending sounded posher, so they called it aluminium ... but Alumnia isn't a place, so they're wrong.
Oh I agree with you. It's the rest of the world that doesn't seem to. And I kind of agree with them too. Let me 'splain.
I think the Brits drive on the wrong side of the road. If you look at the origins of this you will find that they are actually driving on the correct side of the road and due to the evolution of the subject it is the rest of the world that messed it up. But... It's the rest of the whole friggin world. I mean it's just a handful of countries that drive on the left. Get your shit together people. So by that logic... aluminium.
I heard it was a bad transmission of the telegram announcing it's discovery. The Americans got it without the I so just started using that word instead. Everyone else got the correct word.
This is not true. The initial discoverer, Sir Humphrey Davy, named it alumium and later changed it to aluminum. British chemists changed the name adding the I. Websters dictionary sealed the deal in 1925 by standardizing the name.
You know the funny thing about that is some Minecraft mods use Bauxite as the name for the ore and ingots to sidestep the debate on how to spell/pronounce the metal lol
It's pseudocode, since I don't know how to program in Java
Technically no, because it's not modifying the item's forge dictionary internal ID, just the displayed string in the two-word combination (IE: "Bauxite Ingot" -> "Aluminum Ingot")
Potassium (K) is called Kalium in New Latin and a variation thereof in plenty of languages. It makes far more sense. The symbol's K in the periodic table an the eymological link with alkali is in the word. The Brits don't have a leg to stand on.
Then again, Americans are stupid about the metric system. Think they can't visualize what 1 meter is, but almost every American can visualize the length of an M16A4 just fine.
Most Americans aren't actually too biased against metric, I'd say that's a stereotype boosted by an extremely vocal minority. The real problem is that most of us can't visualize the length of a yard or mile any better than we can a meter or kilometer. It's more an across the board lack of education.
You know what really grinds my gears as a non-native speaker? Salmon. Why in the motherfuckium does that word have a silent L?? Get a spelling reform you assholes.
Because the position was literally the “left tenet of the king.” His most trusted advisor would be on his right tenant and the left would be the person protecting his blind non dominant side.
Now funny enough both Leuf and lieu spellings exist since about the same time. The lieu tenant comes from the French “in lieu of,” so in lieu of the king that was the next commander. I am not etymologist but from what I understand both explanations are correct. Basically convergent evolution of the word and its meaning.
It seems to have the same reason: English scholars thinking that it would be smart to adopt an orthography that doesn't match the pronounciation, to be more consistent with latin. i.e. the opposite of what modern-day spelling reforms usually try to do.
But the spelling is fucked up because they changed the spelling to the Italian one without changing the pronounciation. It's like the worst of both worlds, the "worlds" being "keep the French version" and "change spelling and pronounciation to the Italian version".
All the weird words for military purposes especially relating to officer ranks come from french. You can blame the Normans (and by extension once again everything is scandavia's fault) or that whole time period where England and France were basically constantly at war, or once again everything is Napoleon's fault.
France had a long period as the dominant land power of Europe and that resulted in a lot of military organization words in most European languages being pulled from them. It's similar to how a lot of military traditions and styles come from Prussia.
Apparently the word had quite the journey on its way to American mouths. It seems to have started its life in Italian as "colonnello," meaning "column of soldiers," derived from "colonna" meaning "column". And then the French got a hold of it... I believe I dont need to explain any further why the word became so fucked... lol.
The word in French is pronounced exactly the way it's spelled, with the same linguistic origins as in Italian. It's really the British that fucked up the pronunciation all on their own.
I guess I'm numb to -ough because it's a relatively common letter sequence in English, i.e. it kind of follows a rule, but salmon is pretty much unique. And 'through' doesn't have that absurd origin of "let's add a silent letter to make it more similar to latin".
Did you also get that factoid from vsauce back in like 2013?
Edit: https://youtu.be/e5jDspIC4hY factoid starts at about 40 seconds in. The entire video is a good watch, though. My, how our attention has changed since 2013...
IDK if I've heard aluminum by itself called an alloy. I do know that steel wheels are typically not called "alloy wheels" for some reason; that's reserved for wheels made from an aluminum alloy.
Bike parts. Lots of bike parts are made of aluminum-based mystery alloy so they're marketed as just "alloy". It's pretty annoying when you're a casual builder who actually cares what your bike is made out of.
We say aluminum in Canada too. I heard it was because aluminum was the original name but was changed to match the other elements shortly after. I guess NA never got the message though
If we're trying to fix inconsistencies in English, the periodic table is barely worth mentioning. Why are read (reed) and read (red) spelled the same? Why don't cow and tow rhyme?
We should probably just abandon English for something better planned like Esperanto.
I'm honestly a fan of having the option to use standardised/latinised chemical element names.
Cu = Cuprum = Copper.
Hg = Hydrargyrum = Mercury. Hydrargyrum is still sometimes (very very rarely) used in English.
Pb = Plumbum = Lead. The French for lead is plomb, for example. Would clear up a lot of confusion with homographs. We already use plumb in English, as in plumb line. (The fact that it's plumbum, not plumbium, does undermine the whole aluminium>aluminum argument obviously).
Argentum instead of silver. Plenty of languages use a variation of that already. English already uses argent in some contexts, like heraldry.
Same thing for natrium instead of sodium, also common to have a variation of that in plenty of languages.
IRC Silicium was the originally proposed name for silicon. Plenty of languages also use a variation of that.
I picked these various elements because they end in -um rather than -ium when described by their Latin names. Because I think it is funny to complain about aluminum ending in -um.
TBH in the past, I've argued both for the -um ending, and for the -ium ending. It really annoys some people. It's even more annoying, when they realise that you've managed to annoy them with such a pedantic point.
Another one is skeptical/sceptical. "I think you'll find it comes from the Greek, so it should be with a k."
Or the plural octopus. "I think you'll find it comes from the Greek, so it's octopodes. Octopi is certainly wrong, because it doesn't come from latin."
PRECISELY! Thank you for proving it! If a single maths-based event occurs then it is called 'mathematical', as in the singular! Meaning that the term 'mathematics' is plural <3
I love British pronunciation most of the time, except for the word arse. That one for some reason grinds my gears. While Rs are mostly not pronounced in their dialects, when it does get pronounced, it goes hard.
Well, the problem is saying that almost all the elements end with -ium, which makes this a non-issue from the jump.
Also, according to the wiki article on aluminum, the US and UK basically swapped their preferred spellings - the -ium form was first preferred in the US, while the UK preferred the -um form, then they each adopted the other instead.
Platinum enters the chat.
*Platuminium
Technically the guy who discovered it named it Alumium.
Alumium first, but then called it aluminum
It kinda reminds me of how the Brits invented the word “soccer” and now get their knickers in a twist if you say it in front of them.
The one that gets me is they bitch about calling the season Fall. They claim that Americans are so basic and stupid that we can only think to name the season after the leaves falling. They think that the name Autumn (which we also use), borrowed from French, is a far better name for the season.
First of all, we get it. You have your nose firmly up the collective asses of the French, Britain. It's a very pretty language, but maybe you could stop butchering their language for 5 minutes if you're going to be criticizing others for their English.
Second, you are the ones who came up with the name "Fall", Brits. Fall is indeed short for "The Fall of the Leaf". That term predates the US entirely, by almost two centuries, at least. And while you may think to judge us for continuing to use such an obvious name, I have bad news. Because you still use its complement, Spring, short for "The Spring of the Leaf". Say what you will about American English, but at least, in this, we're consistent.
A friend of mine from my TV days was working in South Africa when they hosted the association football World Cup and wound up talking to a woman who worked for the Football Association (the sport’s governing body in England and the reason the sport is called association football). She was angrily insisting to him that Americans invented the name “soccer” and that it never had that name in England. She might have been inebriated, but that was a lot to be confidently incorrect about her own employer.
Same Brits tricked us into calling it soccer then changed their minds.
The bigger player here is probably Charles Martin Hall, who invented* a cheap method of refining it. Turns out yeah, if it's marketed and sold as aluminum in the US that's what people will know it as.
Although I guess it is possible Webster's dictionary influenced Hall's naming choice.
I wouldn't mind if we went back to calling it alumium, though.
* as a sidenote, also invented in France in the same year (coincidence) by Paul Héroult, thus called the Hall-Héroult process
Yes, but only Argon. Nitrogenium, Carbonium, Phosphorusium, Hydrogenium, Xenonium…
It was pronounced aluminum first. The Brits changed it purposely to sound fancy.
Proof.
https://youtube.com/shorts/Gfxm2qqghsQ
IIRC the -ium ending denotes a place of origin. I.e Magnesium was first find in Magnesia. Now, the Brits thought the -ium ending sounded posher, so they called it aluminium ... but Alumnia isn't a place, so they're wrong.
Mendelevium? Ruthorfordium? Uranium? Plutonium?
We performed an autopsy on mendelev and found a new element in there
They discovered those inside Mendel and Rutherford. ... And there's reason Uranium and Plutonium weren't discovered until Bruce Willis went to space.
You know what, it's something I heard once, but doing some research it doesn't really hold water.
Actually I believe it was pronounce alum first. It's changed more than once. Anyway, the discoverer gets to name it.
The discoverer named it aluminum
Yeah, that's my point. The world blames America for getting it wrong but it was really the discoverer that messed it up.
I mean... They didn't really mess it up, Argentum, Molybdenum, Lanthanum, Aurum, Stannum
It's a pretty standard latin element naming, just not AS common as -ium.
Oh I agree with you. It's the rest of the world that doesn't seem to. And I kind of agree with them too. Let me 'splain.
I think the Brits drive on the wrong side of the road. If you look at the origins of this you will find that they are actually driving on the correct side of the road and due to the evolution of the subject it is the rest of the world that messed it up. But... It's the rest of the whole friggin world. I mean it's just a handful of countries that drive on the left. Get your shit together people. So by that logic... aluminium.
I heard it was a bad transmission of the telegram announcing it's discovery. The Americans got it without the I so just started using that word instead. Everyone else got the correct word.
This is not true. The initial discoverer, Sir Humphrey Davy, named it alumium and later changed it to aluminum. British chemists changed the name adding the I. Websters dictionary sealed the deal in 1925 by standardizing the name.
Common sense says this is likely an urban myth / made up.
Nice. “I heard” this bullshit so I’m gonna roll up in here and repeat it without verifying it.
So true! The next three elements that come right after it are Siliconium, Phosphorusium, and Sulfurium! So why wouldn't it be Aluminium?! LOL
I mean, they did write "Almost"
Alumin would be an acceptable compromise.
Alum-
A lu min-
Alumi-
Refined Bauxite.
You know the funny thing about that is some Minecraft mods use Bauxite as the name for the ore and ingots to sidestep the debate on how to spell/pronounce the metal lol
I'm going with 'box-ite', and if that's wrong somehow, I'm removing it from the server, rofl.
I never realized that, time to make a mod that renames those instances aluminum!
if(item(forgedict:bauxite)){
replacePrefix(Aluminum)
};
Uh, does that break every single mod with a recipe involving bauxuminium, or no?
It's pseudocode, since I don't know how to program in Java
Technically no, because it's not modifying the item's forge dictionary internal ID, just the displayed string in the two-word combination (IE: "Bauxite Ingot" -> "Aluminum Ingot")
Hey fair enough, its been... a number of years since I ran a MC server!
I ... don't actually remember the precise syntax anymore either, lol.
It was a British guy who first fucked it up. Cope, Brits.
Same as with soccer
Potassium (K) is called Kalium in New Latin and a variation thereof in plenty of languages. It makes far more sense. The symbol's K in the periodic table an the eymological link with alkali is in the word. The Brits don't have a leg to stand on.
Then again, Americans are stupid about the metric system. Think they can't visualize what 1 meter is, but almost every American can visualize the length of an M16A4 just fine.
Most Americans aren't actually too biased against metric, I'd say that's a stereotype boosted by an extremely vocal minority. The real problem is that most of us can't visualize the length of a yard or mile any better than we can a meter or kilometer. It's more an across the board lack of education.
A kilometer is 1000 M16A4s.
You know what really grinds my gears as a non-native speaker? Salmon. Why in the motherfuckium does that word have a silent L?? Get a spelling reform you assholes.
Now try: "Colonel"
As a native speaker, I think it's orders of magnitude worse.
Y'all are out here gonna ignore "Lieutenant" as 'LeFtenant' ?
TBF, Americans say Loo-ten-unt. I don't know where the British got the F, but you can't use the meme from the post for it!
How would you pronounce the lieu then? It comes out as leeu or loo.
Loo, leeu sounds not American English as a syllable
Because the position was literally the “left tenet of the king.” His most trusted advisor would be on his right tenant and the left would be the person protecting his blind non dominant side.
Now funny enough both Leuf and lieu spellings exist since about the same time. The lieu tenant comes from the French “in lieu of,” so in lieu of the king that was the next commander. I am not etymologist but from what I understand both explanations are correct. Basically convergent evolution of the word and its meaning.
'Left tenet of the king' is simply untrue, the answer is that no one knows — hence the debate.
As an etymologist- this is… NONSENSE. Fucking WHY the need to weigh in on things you know nothing about?
I went after 'em.
Edit: also, sorry admins — I have not read the rules I just try my best to not be shithead.
It seems to have the same reason: English scholars thinking that it would be smart to adopt an orthography that doesn't match the pronounciation, to be more consistent with latin. i.e. the opposite of what modern-day spelling reforms usually try to do.
https://nowiknow.com/the-silent-and-not-so-silent-l/
Apparently "coronel" was first borrowed from French. No surprise there I guess, with the superfluous vowel in the middle.
But the spelling is fucked up because they changed the spelling to the Italian one without changing the pronounciation. It's like the worst of both worlds, the "worlds" being "keep the French version" and "change spelling and pronounciation to the Italian version".
All the weird words for military purposes especially relating to officer ranks come from french. You can blame the Normans (and by extension once again everything is scandavia's fault) or that whole time period where England and France were basically constantly at war, or once again everything is Napoleon's fault.
France had a long period as the dominant land power of Europe and that resulted in a lot of military organization words in most European languages being pulled from them. It's similar to how a lot of military traditions and styles come from Prussia.
"Why hello there, KERNULL! How goes the war?"
Apparently the word had quite the journey on its way to American mouths. It seems to have started its life in Italian as "colonnello," meaning "column of soldiers," derived from "colonna" meaning "column". And then the French got a hold of it... I believe I dont need to explain any further why the word became so fucked... lol.
The word in French is pronounced exactly the way it's spelled, with the same linguistic origins as in Italian. It's really the British that fucked up the pronunciation all on their own.
Why'd you put cologne in your colon, Colonel?
Assert your dominance, pronounce the L.
Sometimes, I intentionally pronounce the 'b' in "subtle", just to make it clear I'm not.
Where's my "Wed-nes-day" crew? I can't be the only one who likes to phonetically pronounce that day.
See also: Feb-ru-ar-y
And for bonus points: my brother insists that "grand prix" be pronounced as grand pricks. I can't deny his logic.
I literally couldn’t pronounce that word as a child from like 8-16 once I saw the N. My brain would automatically split it into 3 syllables
The word through exists and you're upset about a little silent L
I guess I'm numb to -ough because it's a relatively common letter sequence in English, i.e. it kind of follows a rule, but salmon is pretty much unique. And 'through' doesn't have that absurd origin of "let's add a silent letter to make it more similar to latin".
Dear English Language
You're right, we should fix that. Helum, Lithum, Beryllum, Sodum, Magnesum.
We should also fix Platinium and Lanthanium.
Muhahahaha
What about laudanum? I take that shit like magnesium anyway
Magnesum*
Do we add ium to lead and gold?
Leadium and Goldium.
Needs text alternative.
Molybdenium, platinium, lanthanium?
Soccer
You mean the word that was literally invented by the English to describe asSOCiation football?
Picking 3 letters in the middle of the word is strange to me. I think we should call it "asser"
Assest
Just trying to stir the pot a bit. :)
Did you also get that factoid from vsauce back in like 2013?
Edit: https://youtu.be/e5jDspIC4hY factoid starts at about 40 seconds in. The entire video is a good watch, though. My, how our attention has changed since 2013...
No, my mom is from England and i have to stand my ground on a lot of stuff because I won't let a bunch of Limey's criticize me for their own doings
Just hit em with the Anakin when they don't want to take blame for their own doings
That's not even an issue.
Try asking them why renaming Natrium to Sodium.
Or Kalium to Potassium.
Why
They said to try ask that not actually do it!!!
I don't care which you use for alu
But if you're one of those who call it alloy, then I hope you step on a Lego.
Alloy is a mixture of different materials, not short for aluminium
who the fuck calls aluminum alloy
I have never heard of this before
I think you'd get laughed out of the room if you said that around us
IDK if I've heard aluminum by itself called an alloy. I do know that steel wheels are typically not called "alloy wheels" for some reason; that's reserved for wheels made from an aluminum alloy.
Bike parts. Lots of bike parts are made of aluminum-based mystery alloy so they're marketed as just "alloy". It's pretty annoying when you're a casual builder who actually cares what your bike is made out of.
I have never noticed that on bike parts before, huh
It happens a lot in cycling circles
Guy I went to high school with
He was the epitome of gullible, and had a conspiracy theorist dad
Is it time to rename gold to Aurium instead?
Aluminuminium. Make everyone angry.
We say aluminum in Canada too. I heard it was because aluminum was the original name but was changed to match the other elements shortly after. I guess NA never got the message though
How do you measure your height and what temp do you set your stove to
Copper ium? Gold ium? Lead ium? Mercury ium?
If we're trying to fix inconsistencies in English, the periodic table is barely worth mentioning. Why are read (reed) and read (red) spelled the same? Why don't cow and tow rhyme?
We should probably just abandon English for something better planned like Esperanto.
I'm honestly a fan of having the option to use standardised/latinised chemical element names.
Cu = Cuprum = Copper.
Hg = Hydrargyrum = Mercury. Hydrargyrum is still sometimes (very very rarely) used in English.
Pb = Plumbum = Lead. The French for lead is plomb, for example. Would clear up a lot of confusion with homographs. We already use plumb in English, as in plumb line. (The fact that it's plumbum, not plumbium, does undermine the whole aluminium>aluminum argument obviously).
Argentum instead of silver. Plenty of languages use a variation of that already. English already uses argent in some contexts, like heraldry.
Same thing for natrium instead of sodium, also common to have a variation of that in plenty of languages.
IRC Silicium was the originally proposed name for silicon. Plenty of languages also use a variation of that.
I picked these various elements because they end in -um rather than -ium when described by their Latin names. Because I think it is funny to complain about aluminum ending in -um.
TBH in the past, I've argued both for the -um ending, and for the -ium ending. It really annoys some people. It's even more annoying, when they realise that you've managed to annoy them with such a pedantic point.
Another one is skeptical/sceptical. "I think you'll find it comes from the Greek, so it should be with a k."
Or the plural octopus. "I think you'll find it comes from the Greek, so it's octopodes. Octopi is certainly wrong, because it doesn't come from latin."
I think I may be an energy vampire.
Cuprum, Aurum, Plumbium, Hydrargyrum.
They don't exactly end in -ium but close enough
It's plumbum. Notice how they all end in -um? Just like aluminum? You almost caught the nerd joke.
And Mathematics is singular, not plural, so shortening it would be "Math" not "Maths."
But it's better to appreciate differences in the pronunciations and spellings of words
PRECISELY! Thank you for proving it! If a single maths-based event occurs then it is called 'mathematical', as in the singular! Meaning that the term 'mathematics' is plural <3
Math's
In America do you call it copum?
Aluminium is more fun to say
just fuck it out and call it alum
I’ll give you aluminium if you brits agree to stop pronouncing “ears” like “urrs” because it really weirds me out.
I didn't realize that was a thing.
I love British pronunciation most of the time, except for the word arse. That one for some reason grinds my gears. While Rs are mostly not pronounced in their dialects, when it does get pronounced, it goes hard.
So is it Molybdenium now?
Okay, alumiNEEum it is, then.
I thought the Brits pronounced it "Deep Substrate Foliated Kalkite."
don't have dubya pronounce nuclear
Dang. Late to the noo-kyu-lar.
Hurr gurr Al'memum
Now do Londinium
First rename "Platinum". Then we'll talk.
This is really funny as a bilingual person.
When I speak English to my white friends I say Aluminum.
When I speak Sinhala to family I say Aluminium.
Other English-speaking countries do that in a more adequate way?
Yes.
Well, the problem is saying that almost all the elements end with -ium, which makes this a non-issue from the jump. Also, according to the wiki article on aluminum, the US and UK basically swapped their preferred spellings - the -ium form was first preferred in the US, while the UK preferred the -um form, then they each adopted the other instead.
Also: the latin for lead(Pb) is plumbum, not plumbium. Same thing for gold(Au). It's Aurum, not Aurium. Same for Iron(Fe). Ferrum not Ferrium.
Why say more syllable when few do
Also Nucular vs Nuclear
Except one of those is not a word in any dialect, just an unfortunate mispronunciation. (Unless there's such thing as "American Idiot English")
I bet Iggy Pop could say it.