And just ask yourself:
Isn’t saebbur kinda bland by now?
doesn’t kyBer sound better? [with the late ancient shift of b to B in the middle of words]
Just not guubber, please, not guubber…
2 Likes
But then cyberspace would lose its consonance!
(And besides, I think the Jedi have stolen that pronunciation for a type of crystal used in lightsabers)
3 Likes
I would like to see the evidence for that. AFAIK it went alumium->aluminium and then split to aluminum in the US (owing to the high price of typeset letter i.)
Aluminium was discovered after the -ium convention for metals was invented, and although Davy used Latin names for sodium and potassium they were still -ium names (Natrium and Kalium).
4 Likes
You mean like India, Japan and a number of African countries? There are two other EU countries that drive on the left (Ireland and Malta). One reason for the popularity of Japanese cars in the UK was that we get them as designed, without the compromises inevitable in the conversion to the “wrong” side.
…and Greek. Many taxonomic names are of Greek origin and I once got a very nice apology from my near-hero Steven Gould when I pointed out he had identified a Greek name as Latin. Most of the names of the things that interest children are Greek (dinosaur, pteranodon, tyrannosaur, coelacanth occur off the top of my head.)
6 Likes
The wikipedia article gives pretty good references in this case. An 1808 paper by Davy where he talks about calling it alumium, an 1812 book where he calls it aluminum (along with silicum, manganesum, zincum, stannum, etc.), and then an 1813 review where someone else corrected it to aluminium to have a more classical sound.
They do say aluminium was initially preferred in the US, but Webster went with aluminum, and it became popular after. The reason doesn’t seem to be well-known, and I suppose it could have been because i was expensive. But then he preferred a lot of more common words without u, and if that gets credited to etymology more than cost, what evidence is there this one technical word was otherwise?
6 Likes
If Webster was involved that explains a lot. Mostly he just liked things his way, and was willing to sell the dictionaries to unsuspecting pioneers to get his own way.
5 Likes
Yes, but most of the Greek names and elements follow the Latin standards for transliteration of Greek into Latin, so they often depend on Latin pronunciation, though they often require additional letters: ch, th, ph, etc.
P.S. And the use of ph, instead of f, dates this system to classical antiquity. You get place-names like “Foenice” in the Notitia Dignitatum, instead of “Phoenicia” or “Punica,” in late antiquity.
4 Likes
That’s because (a) having two alphabets is inconvenient but (b) because for many years the classical school system worked like this: first you learned Latin, then you were taught Greek in Latin, because Latin was the language of the educated.
I get caught out because since I was at school the spelling of sulphur has been standardised by IUPAC on the US spelling sulfur.
3 Likes
A half out of 5 isn’t a very good score, I must say.
Davy (and other chemists) were no linguists, and it isn’t surprising that clumsy words like manganesum didn’t catch on. Without stress indicators, how do you know how to pronounce polysyllabic elements? One guesses they were so used to written communication in a pre-telephone period that they really didn’t give any thought to logical pronunciation.
2 Likes
I’m not really sure what that means. But a moment ago you claimed that aluminum was a later introduction and even Davy’s Latin names were still -ium based. Here you see that is wrong; he used aluminum for the metal from alumina along with Latin names like stannum and ferrum. If that isn’t the very evidence you wanted to see, I guess I didn’t understand your question.
2 Likes
Well, I was just joking. It didn’t occur to me that Japanese cars are designed for left driving but of course they would be. Interesting that Canada drives on the right, I guess due to proximity to the US.
After this discussion, I was curious as to why the sch in “school” and “schedule” would be pronounced differently. School is from middle English scole, while schedule from middle English cedule or sedule. So it makes sense. But I must admit, the alliteration of “skool skedule” seems natural to me.
5 Likes
You’re focussing on a very short period of time - 1812 and 1813. I was looking at the broader history. There’s an article about it here:
It’s an interesting and convoluted story but the bit I was thinking about was this:
“In the USA, the position was more complicated. Noah Webster’s Dictionary of 1828 has only aluminum, though the standard spelling among US chemists throughout most of the nineteenth century was aluminium; it was the preferred version in The Century Dictionary of 1889 and is the only spelling given in the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913. Searches in an archive of American newspapers show a most interesting shift. Up to the 1890s, both spellings appear in rough parity, though with the –ium version slightly the more common, but after about 1895 that reverses quite substantially, with the decade starting in 1900 having the –um spelling about twice as common as the alternative; in the following decade the –ium spelling crashes to a few hundred compared to half a million examples of –um.”
The article makes the point that until 1855 aluminium had only been made in the sort of quantities we now associate with radioisotopes. At that point the scientific spelling on both sides of the Atlantic had settled on aluminium, but Webster’s spelling was used about half the time in the popular press. But then, while aluminium stayed in Europe, the US switched to aluminum.
Davy’s changes of naming weren’t terribly relevant - just like the early minor fuss over the “neutron” and Fermi’s solving the problem by suggesting neutrino for the light particle. What mattered was what it was called in the wider world and it’s clear that there, Webster’s (probably accidental) mis-spelling of what by then was the usual name confused the popular press while the scientists generally agreed.
The “half out of 5” remark was because of the names by Davy that you cited, the only one that has survived was aluminum - and that is allowed as a variant of aluminium.
3 Likes
My car’s a Toyota, and once when I was giving someone a lift they pointed out the dashboard is symmetrical – the insets to hold the steering column and the glove box are identical. That is, the car’s been designed to be either left or right hand drive, depending on how the parts are put together.
4 Likes
Well, yes, think how difficult it would have been in the 1812-14 war if Canada drove* on the left, then the invading armies would have run smack into traffic going the other way.
*“drove” does not imply cars, of course. There are traces of drove roads near here that date back at least 4500 years, though of course we don’t know whether the locals kept to the left.
That’s absolutely true of dashboards, but steering and pedals are another matter. I get the impression that the Japanese, for obvious reasons, pay a lot of attention to being able to switch, whereas European manufacturers are more likely to do LHD as an afterthought as for them it’s a minor market. I’ve seen some really clumsy mechanisms on FIATs, and the A class Merc had to have a convoluted route for the LHD steering wheel. I drove one in France and liked it, then I test drove one in the UK and it was like steering a farm tractor - vague and no feel.
Electric self driving cars are going to make this something our grandchildren will wonder about when they read old books.
4 Likes
Of course when I was talking about the origin of the spellings, I was talking about the time they originated. There it’s just as I said: lots of metals not ending in -ium, and even the emender only saying it sounded better, not that it was a rule. Even today it’s not required though obviously preferred, with molybdenum, lanthanum, tantalum, and platinum surviving in English.
So, originating as a hypercorrection, unless you’d rather consider it only a preference for euphony. The subsequent history you link agrees substantially with what I said: aluminum being a reintroduction via Webster, which you are only assuming was a mistake rather than copying Davy, with no sign of being a later invention to cut costs like you claimed.
If you think modern use should not be determined by the 1810s, I agree, and even implied as much originally. But I’ll thank you not to claim I have the origin backward, ask for my evidence, and then dismiss it as not what we were talking about. I was, and a moment ago you were too; was I not supposed to answer?
2 Likes
Getting back on topic, again:
Stuff that really grinds my gears; when companies just arbitrarily decide to discontinue well-liked products.
*pouts
13 Likes
The Body Shop is the worst for that. Every three months they have a product line turnover where some stuff gets cut and other stuff gets introduced.
And then other stuff gets kept in the lineup, but good luck finding it on the shelves.
11 Likes
You mean like that one bra style that fits you and is actually comfortable? And what they replace it with is not better in the least?
Nah, I don’t think I know what you mean. 
13 Likes
I dont usually shop there, but I loved that product; the bastards.
Yes, exactly.
Or when they change the recipe for your favorite treats, and then they don’t taste the same anymore…
13 Likes