• PumpkinSkink@lemmy.world
    121·
    4 days ago

    I’m gonna take this chance to air my personal grievance with “Iodine”, which is commonly pronounced (in the US at least) “aye-o-dine”, but if we look at all of the other halogen, their “-ine” ending is pronounced “-een”, and therefore iodine should clearly be pronounced “aye-o-deen”.

  • ornery_chemist@mander.xyz
    3·
    5 days ago

    Back in my day there was an element called unununium until some nuclear scientists bismuth-munching paper-pushers with nickel allergies decided in 2004 that they liked Röntgen more than Regirock.

    And before anyone checks, R/S were released in 2002 in Japan and 2003 internationally.

    • Doom@ttrpg.network
      224·
      5 days ago

      Just like soccer.

      Look the language is ours now england, you lost the right.

      • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
        182·
        5 days ago

        Alumina ore was smelted/refined to isolate the pure metal.

        Using the preexisting naming convention that ore->metal goes a->um, the discoverer of the element named it Aluminum.

        Later, British chemists got mad that their US naming standard was different from their own standard.

        • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
          113·
          5 days ago

          no.

          the discoverer, humphry davy, was english. the name is originally the english “alum” and the latin “ium”, which was criticized because names were traditionally constructed from latin roots. european scientists suggested “aluminium”, for “element created from alum”, but the year after that, when davy published a chemistry book, he spelled it “aluminum”. this took hold in britain, but the rest of europe used “aluminium” so they standardized.

          a few years later, when the word first appeared in an american dictionary, only the “num” spelling was added. scientists kept using “-ium” but the general populace went on the dictionary definition until it won out. the “american” spelling was only accepted by american scientists about 110 years after the element was discovered.

          • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
            201·
            5 days ago

            So the guy who discovered it published a book and named his discovery in his book “aluminum”?

            Well case closed. It’s aluminum.

            • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
              25·
              4 days ago

              and then scientific consensus made him change it. there was a clique of, quote, “patriotic” englishmen who, worried about “foreign influences”, kept using the misspelling, but they were very few and very much gone by the time the americans changed their minds.

    • gmtom@lemmy.world
      25·
      4 days ago

      No, it’s was Alumium originally. So you guys changed it too, but decided to chsbge it to something worse.

  • Wilco@lemm.eeEnglish
    659·
    5 days ago

    We say it the original correct way in the US. Other countries changed it for some reason. The guy that discovered it in 1808, Sir Humphrey Davy named it “Alumium” which based on Alumen (Latin for bitter salt)but quickly changed it to “Aluminum”. I swear I remember reading that he kept getting shit on by the science community and his friends for naming a metal “bitter salt” in Latin … but can’t find a reference.

    His colleagues in Britain did mess with him and start using the name “Aluminium” … exactly because it ended in “ium” like ALL the other elements (Oxygenium, Carbonium, Ironium, Zincium, Nitrogenium, and the like). They US just kept the name the discoverer wanted instead of giving into those British asshats that just wanted to troll Sir Davy.

    He also isolated Magnesium and named it “magnium”, but later changed to magnesium. The guy just couldnt settle on names. Again, in my version of reality it is because his friends kept giving him shit.

    • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
      222·
      5 days ago

      They US just kept the name the discoverer wanted instead of giving into those British asshats that just wanted to troll Sir Davy.

      It probably wasnt really a willful defiance thing. It’s likely more correct to say that we kept the name because by the time they changed it officially in Europe, we had millions of students across the country that had textbooks with the name Aluminum in it, that had already been taught the original name, and if the inconsistentcy was even important enought to consider “correcting”, it was likely deemed too costly and too much of a headache to change at the time. By the time people were buying reprints/new editions/more recently written textbooks anyway, professional chemists in the US had been calling it Aluminum for years. Given how isolated we were from Europe in the early 1800s, there was very little pressure to align with them on it, and so it stayed. The longer it stayed the more likely it was to be permanent, and here we are.

      But yeah, Sir Humphrey Davy was an indecisive wishy-washy namer of elements, disseminated multiple names across the world, but somehow that is our fault when we just stuck with the one we were given and everyone else changed over nitpicky conventions. It’s not the only thing that Brits shit on about American English that is entirely their invention or their mistake:

      • “Soccer” being a British term short for “Association Football”

      • The season “Fall” being a British term shortened from the phrase “The Fall of the Leaf” and directly complementary to “Spring” which comes from the phrase “The Spring of the Leaf”, which they still use despite making fun of Americans for “Fall” instead of their “Autumn”, which Americans also use.

      • “Dove” instead of “dived”, “pled” instead of “pleaded”, “have gotten” instead of “have got”, etc. all started in Britain but were dropped there and stayed in the US.

      • “Herb” being pronounced with an audible “h”. The word is borrowed from French, where the h is silent, exactly like , “honorary”, and “honesty”. Neither country pronounces either of those words with an “h” sound, but that doesnt stop people like Eddie Izzard shitting on how Americans say it with a silent “h” despite the American pronunciation being, arguably, more correct given the word’s origins.

      Side note, it is crazy how many words in English are borrowed from French, even if they are horribly mangled and unrecognizable now in a lot of cases. The British Aristocracy really had their noses shoved firmly up French asses for a lot of their history in the last few centuries.

      • Wilco@lemm.eeEnglish
        173·
        5 days ago

        I suspect that if the US had adopted the name “Aluminium” Britain would have changed it again and they would be making fun of us for not calling it “Aluminiumium”.

        • gmtom@lemmy.world
          11·
          4 days ago

          I think Americans vastly overestimate how much Brits care about spiting them. If anything it would be more likely for the Americans to change the name to be different from the Brits.

    • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
      2·
      3 days ago

      The only reason it’s called ‘Aluminum’ in the US is that name was popularised in the Webster’s dictionary in the US firstly, and then Hall who preferred the less common ‘Aluminum’ spelling for marketing his new Aluminium refining process as he thought it sounded fancy like Platinum. Prior to that it was more widely called ‘Aluminium’ in the US as well as the rest of the world - as it was the dominant name scientifically, and nobody else used it much as it wasn’t widely commercially used until the late 19th century / early 20th century.

      This is all on Wikipedia, dunno why people feel the need to make up their own stories every single time this comes up, but it does make us laugh.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Spelling

      • Wilco@lemm.eeEnglish
        11·
        3 days ago

        From the Wikipedia page you linked;

        Davy suggested the metal be named alumium in 1808[30] and aluminum in 1812, thus producing the modern name.[29] Other scientists used the spelling aluminium

        The name Aluminium never caught on in the US. It appeared in a few books and was in a dictionary, but so we’re words like Soop (for Soup) and greef (for grief). These did not catch on, Americans just kept using Aluminum. Webster wanted to standardize words … but nobody wanted to use dawter instead of daughter. They did stop using “Gaol” and used Jail instead.

        The word history was “alumium” in 1807, then changed to “aluminum” in 1808. It was not changed to “aluminium” until 1812

        • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 days ago

          Edited my comment for more clarity. But the etymology of the spelling is all in the Wikipedia article if you’d just read that small ‘spelling’ section instead of stopping when you feel you’ve read something that backs your point. It was 100% driven by American marketers, not “Brits changing their minds”, and yes ‘Aluminium’ most certainly had ‘caught on in the US’ and was the most popular spelling. Read Wikipedia - it cites sources in the form of several reputable books covering this history.

          […] in 1892, Hall used the Aluminum spelling in his advertising handbill for his new electrolytic method of producing the metal, despite his constant use of the Aluminium spelling in all the patents he filed between 1886 and 1903. It is unknown whether this spelling was introduced by mistake or intentionally, but Hall preferred aluminum since its introduction because it resembled platinum, the name of a prestigious metal.[141] By 1890, both spellings had been common in the United States, the -ium spelling being slightly more common; by 1895, the situation had reversed; by 1900, aluminum had become twice as common as aluminium; in the next decade, the -um spelling dominated American usage. In 1925, the American Chemical Society adopted this spelling.[135]

          • Wilco@lemm.eeEnglish
            11·
            3 days ago

            It is what it is. The US did not accept the THIRD name change. No one really knew about the first name. Aluminium appeared in the fucking dictionary … but the US population ignored it and stayed with the second name.

            Wikipedia is just citing old books … the same old books people disregarded when they refused to use the new weird name.

            Webster was an idiot and was trying to change hundreds of words and the population just wasn’t having it. “Soop” instead of “Soup” was literally forced on the public, Aluminium, Dawter … do we use those? No.

            Wikipedia is simply wrong. Both spellings were never equally used. Even your post confirms this, the dudes patent said “Aluminium”, but he used Aluminum instead because he liked it. This is how it was everywhere.

            • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
              1·
              3 days ago

              Ahh yes, Wikipedia is wrong, books on aluminium and scientific naming are also wrong, evidence…? trust me bro. Once again you keep the parts from Wikipedia you like, but discard facts counter to your point.

              What’s the point in engaging further, we’ve reached peak comedy. 👌

              • Wilco@lemm.eeEnglish
                11·
                3 days ago

                Agreed. I have said people ignored the books and dictionary entries, the word Aluminium and MANY others never caught on. You just keep pointing to those books.

                The US literally “noped” out of the word Aluminium and refused to use it. If Im wrong, then why arent we saying it today?

    • gmtom@lemmy.world
      114·
      4 days ago

      We say it the original correct way in the US

      .

      Sir Humphrey Davy named it “Alumium”

      • Wilco@lemm.eeEnglish
        83·
        4 days ago

        I explained the whole naming process. You gotta read it. The US was given the name as Aluminum and did not change it when the British changed it a third time.

        • gmtom@lemmy.world
          27·
          4 days ago

          But aluminum is nit the original name and you explain that. It’s also not the correct way either.

          • Wilco@lemm.eeEnglish
            72·
            4 days ago

            Welcome to ignore. Everyone else understood the discussion … you are the outlier.

            • gmtom@lemmy.world
              21·
              4 days ago

              Alumium is the original name. You can’t explicity say that and then also argue that Aluminum is the original. It’s a direct contradiction.

              • Jax@sh.itjust.works
                12·
                4 days ago

                ‘This just in, new evidence suggests that Tolkien’s working title for ‘The Lord of the Rings’ was ‘Guy With Rings Wants to Conquer the World’. According to gmtom - this is what we should call ‘The Lord of the Rings’ from now on, because it’s the original name.’

                Edit: stop

                • gmtom@lemmy.world
                  11·
                  3 days ago

                  Strawman argument. I’m litterally just saying that you can’t argue in favour of aluminum by saying its the original name, when aluminum is the original. It’s not even about which name is “”“correct”“” it’s just about using factually information.

  • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
    473·
    5 days ago

    If you hate Americans because of this, of all things, then you’re going to lose your mind when you find out about everything that’s happened this year.

    • vithigar@lemmy.ca
      29·
      4 days ago

      Let’s table that discussion.

      Tap for spoiler

      The meanings of “table” as a verb in US vs UK parliamentary usage are literally opposites. With the US meaning being to stop discussing or put aside for later, while the UK version means to begin discussing.

      This actually caused confusion during allied meetings in WWII.

  • jsomae@lemmy.ml
    25·
    4 days ago

    We canadians also say Aluminum and I would like to be represented in this comic as a target of mockery alongside the US thank you.

  • ItsMrChristmas@lemmy.zip
    232·
    3 days ago

    Substance discovered by folks that called it alum or aluminum for literally five centuries then the Brits come galloping in to colonize the accepted name then try to look down on everyone else

    • Kirca@lemmy.world
      1·
      7 hours ago

      Cool narrative you got there mate, problem is while the term “alum” was used for (far more than) 5 centuries, the words “aluminium” and “aluminium” were both coined around the same time, roughly 1810ish. Also, Sir. Davy, who coined the phrase that you hold dear, was British.

      Tldr: every part of that statement is wrong

  • lefixxx@lemmy.world
    243·
    4 days ago

    Aluminium is not the -ium of alumin

    Aluminium is the genericitation of aluminum.

    The actual -ium is of alum. The original name is alumium.

    Aluminum is a modification of alumiun, not aluminium