They try to correct me here and I laugh at them, then they call me an uncivilized yank. And by they I mean my Brit partner, but he grew up in NJ so I’m not sure who he is calling uncivilised.
Aluminum was the original spelling, adding an extra I was a British thing so aluminum can match the pronunciation of other elements like helium, lithium, beryllium, uranium, and plutonium.
Why didn’t you guys change iron to ironium? Or hydrogen to hydrogenium? Tungsten to tungstenium? Lead to leadium?
It doesn’t make any sense to change one element name when there are plenty of other elements that don’t match the naming scheme.
The original spelling wasn’t aluminum, it was alumium. Which then was proposed to be aluminium in French, and got picked up by the Royal Society. After, the guy who introduced the term to the Royal Society (Humphry Davy) started calling it aluminum but the other term had already stuck.
the English versions of element names are mostly stolen from other languages anyway. Some were isolated before the theory of elements and atoms had been solidified, so they already had names in common use. All of the examples you listed for “ium” elements were only discovered in the last few hundred years
Maybe there are regional variances. Like how the English pronounce all kinds of words incorrectly, despite creating the language.
Aloo-min-i-um makes the thumbs sound like cartoons.
I think al yu min ium is more correct
They try to correct me here and I laugh at them, then they call me an uncivilized yank. And by they I mean my Brit partner, but he grew up in NJ so I’m not sure who he is calling uncivilised.
Aluminum was the original spelling, adding an extra I was a British thing so aluminum can match the pronunciation of other elements like helium, lithium, beryllium, uranium, and plutonium.
Why didn’t you guys change iron to ironium? Or hydrogen to hydrogenium? Tungsten to tungstenium? Lead to leadium?
It doesn’t make any sense to change one element name when there are plenty of other elements that don’t match the naming scheme.
The original spelling wasn’t aluminum, it was alumium. Which then was proposed to be aluminium in French, and got picked up by the Royal Society. After, the guy who introduced the term to the Royal Society (Humphry Davy) started calling it aluminum but the other term had already stuck.
the English versions of element names are mostly stolen from other languages anyway. Some were isolated before the theory of elements and atoms had been solidified, so they already had names in common use. All of the examples you listed for “ium” elements were only discovered in the last few hundred years