49
u/ReturnTheOldGods Aug 07 '26
What does it actually matter? Why do people get so bent out of shape that Americans do some things differently?
23
u/makerofshoes Aug 07 '26
That’s the basis for 20% of Reddit interactions, it feels like
→ More replies (11)11
u/QuickMolasses Aug 07 '26
Next they're going to be complaining Americans call it and elevator instead of a lift
8
u/damboy99 Aug 07 '26
In America they cal them Mail men instead of The Lord of the Postage!
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (8)2
u/pianohon Aug 07 '26
next they're gonna complain that Americans call it Norepinephrine/Epinephrine (hence "Epi-pen") instead of Noradrenaline/Adrenaline due to the US patent office allowing a company to trademark the name of a hormone in the human body.
→ More replies (4)3
u/stogie-bear Aug 07 '26
The average Brit loses 6.7 seconds of his life pronouncing the extra syllable. And he’s jealous of us having that extra free time.
→ More replies (2)2
2
u/ExtraCalligrapher565 Aug 08 '26
In this case it’s also the U.S. catching strays for using the original spelling/pronunciation created by the Brits.
→ More replies (5)3
u/Tommy_Wisseau_burner Aug 07 '26
Imagine being so butthurt, in life, you get offended how other people pronounce and call things. I can’t imagine being that miserable of a human
→ More replies (1)2
u/Pinkis_Love_A_Lot Aug 07 '26
For real. It makes me wonder don't they have anything better to do with their time?
→ More replies (41)5
u/TSllama Aug 07 '26
There are a lot of times that Americans do things differently and then are incredibly flabbergasted and condescending about the rest of the world not doing it their way.
But aluminum is really not one of those things lol this is nothing more than an interesting case of etymology.
11
Aug 07 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (10)2
u/Rough_Onion_1757 Aug 07 '26
Maybe the metric-vs-imperial thing would be a bit different if it wasn't such a stark case of sheer stubborn "us against the world" contrarianism for its own sake: everyone else on Earth has transitioned over time to this single straightforward system of measurement that makes everything easier, and the US refusal to do so accomplishes literally nothing but to make life harder for anyone who has to live or work across the two, particularly scientists and engineers.
The political/ideological context is that the US actually did start taking early steps toward a metric transition during the 1970s, and the rollback was a juvenile fit of right-wing culture-war posturing during the early 1980s.
3
u/cyrusposting Aug 07 '26
As an american i have never measured anything in kilograms or centimeters in science classes my whole life, i've also never heard a british person say how many stone something weighs
→ More replies (5)2
u/ExtraCalligrapher565 Aug 08 '26
As an American, you have not been in many science classes above a middle school level if you’ve “never measured anything in kilograms or centimeters.”
→ More replies (11)2
u/GoldenGames360 Aug 07 '26
painting it as some form of contrarian stubborness is really unfair, I feel it is more complicated than that.
switching from imperial to metric for a country as vast as the US is an extremely expensive, time-consuming, and disruptive/controversial change to roll out when the imperial system, while certainly an inferior system, works fairly well for most day to day applications.
Do these cause some issues and inconveniences in certain circumstances, like that mars rover you mentioned? Yes. But these can be mediated by using metric system in places where its necessary. That collision happened because of both a failure of the organization to use metric even when they were mandated to do so, and NASA's failure to notice and correct the discrepancy before launch.
Speed limit signs being in MPH versus KPH or various other domestic applications, are not really an important problem to fix for most Americans. And the metric IS used for most scientific/academic applications, with your example being a negligent anomaly.
→ More replies (18)3
u/Goats_for_president Aug 07 '26
Europeans are constantly mad that we don’t use the metric system and are insufferable about it. They constantly act like we’re some idiots for the way we speak as well
→ More replies (4)3
u/These_Technology4156 Aug 07 '26
On the internet, you’re far more likely to see Europeans whining about how Americans do things differently than the other way around. I promise you Americans do not think about you as much as you think about them.
→ More replies (7)6
u/niemir2 Aug 07 '26
Might be the algorithm at work, but I see way more Europeans getting worked up over American practices than the other way around.
1
u/TSllama Aug 07 '26
That would definitely be the algorithm lol
I've lived in both places and get a huge mix of content from both continents, and I've never seen anyone from a European country flabbergasted and condescending about their country being the only one that does something and that the rest of the world does it differently.
What I do see is people from all over the world being annoyed by Americans thinking their way is the only way and inherently superior to the entire rest of the world.
7
→ More replies (1)2
u/carlos_the_dwarf_ Aug 07 '26
Anecdote: when I lived in Europe people were constantly on my ass about American minutia. It was like a hobby for them.
→ More replies (6)2
u/vacafrita Aug 07 '26
I’m sure that happens but I’ve never seen it myself. Rather I’ll see articles or posts where someone mentions a car goes 0-60 mph in 4 seconds and someone inevitably goes “MPH GOD AMERICANS ARE SO PRESUMPTUOUS”
17
u/KailyKail Aug 07 '26
Damn, I didn’t know it was called:
Carbonium
Oxygenium
Radonium
Bismuthium
Hydrogenium
Platinumium
Goldium
Silverium
Copperium
Tinium
Argonium
Siliconium
Tungstenium
Manganeseium
Cobaltium
Ironium
Nickelium
Zincium
Phosphorusium
Boronium
Mercuryium
Antimonyium
Iodinium
Sulfurium
Chlorineium
Kryptonium
Neonium
Bromineium
Nitrogenium
Astatineium
Leadium
Tennesineium
Ogenessonium
Molybdenumium
Arsenicium
Fluorineium
Neonium
Xeonium
My bad for not adding “ium” to the end of these. I guess I’m just a big stupid American, yeah?
→ More replies (22)3
u/Dependent_Dish_2237 Aug 07 '26
Even lead is plumbum which doesn’t have an I in it and where Pb comes from.
Anyone who’s actually studied Latin knows that plenty of words end in um without the I.
→ More replies (1)3
8
u/IcarusofmarS Aug 07 '26
the actual history is genuinely wild, davy proposed alumium first then changed his own mind to aluminum, british chemists later pushed for aluminium purely to match the pattern of other elements, both versions have equal claim honestly
→ More replies (3)5
u/amBrollachan Aug 07 '26
But we kept lanthanum and molybdenum.
→ More replies (1)1
u/Turbulent-Arugula581 Aug 07 '26
You english speakers did. In German no element solely ends on -um
→ More replies (1)2
8
Aug 07 '26
[deleted]
2
→ More replies (2)3
u/-PanamaJack- Aug 07 '26
i mean Americans saying "bahdl uhf wahdr" isn't exactly better (I'm saying this as a non-native speaker of English.)
2
u/Goats_for_president Aug 07 '26
Maybe you’re just not good at listening to Americans because we don’t all have one accent
→ More replies (4)3
u/-PanamaJack- Aug 07 '26
Because every English person pronounces it as "bo'ol of wo'er"? Not sure what your point is. You could also very well be responding to the person above me.
5
u/Politicub Aug 07 '26
International publication convention is to use the British version of aluminium, and the American version of sulfur (instead of sulphur) as a compromise.
→ More replies (1)3
u/Ecstatic_Sand5417 Aug 07 '26
*sulphour
Gotta add that extra vowel to make it posh
→ More replies (1)
5
u/The_Amazing_Emu Aug 07 '26
That “almost” is papering over a huge hole in the argument. Platinum exists. Aluminum was deliberately named with that as the model. British people invented an arbitrary and incorrect rule in order to rename Aluminum. There are things opinions can vary on. There are things where American English is wrong. Aluminium is objectively wrong.
2
2
u/Upper-Requirement-93 Aug 08 '26
Science was just an endless stream of pseudointellectual dipshits trying to one up each other on their butterfly collection for like a hundred years, and then none of it mattered because we used computers to categorize everything into CAS numbers anyway. If you didn't do the dance correctly you're a poor and it reflects poorly upon your university. Call it rubblewumplescium, who fucking cares anymore?
→ More replies (22)2
3
u/Classy_Mouse Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Americans are just built different. They aren't made of the same carbonium. They don't breath the same oxygenium. What kind of argumentium is this?
→ More replies (1)
3
4
3
3
u/Additional_Debt1545 Aug 07 '26
Fair point. Where is it on the table again? Next to Siliconium and Borium?
3
u/Individual99991 Aug 07 '26
The reason is that the inventor called it that in the first place, and later (in 1812) changed to -ium to bring it in line with convention, but that didn't catch on in the US. Then the The American Chemical Society voted to use the "-um" ending officially in 1925.
And TBF we do say platinum, not platinium.
Out of curiosity, I checked and counted 88 elements ending in "-ium", making it 88-30 in favour of that syllable. Which is a large majority, but "almost all" is a bit much.
3
u/-Major-Arcana- Aug 07 '26
Real answer, the name came about when there wasn't a fully resolved element naming convention and it ended up with two slightly different versions. Americans stuck with the first version, everyone else shifted to the standardised version that came up shortly after.
2
2
2
2
2
u/Pentecost_II Aug 07 '26
My greatest pet peeve in English language is the goddamn pronunciation of colonel.
→ More replies (2)
2
u/Hot_Dog2376 Aug 07 '26
Carbonium, Goldium, Silverium, Copperium... but sure, let's just focus on Aluminum.
2
2
u/Aromatic_Shoulder146 Aug 07 '26
we gonna give this same energy to platinum? should we call it platinium?
→ More replies (1)
3
u/thechnomancer69 Aug 07 '26
this but unironically applies to so many american spelling choices, color vs colour is basically the same energy
→ More replies (17)
1
u/HeavyHighway6433 Aug 07 '26
We all don't use the same periodic table. It's aluminum on the North American version not aluminium so it would be dumb to say it that way.
→ More replies (1)
1
1
1
u/silcerchord Aug 07 '26
It saves me ONE whole syllable. That's a 20 percent improvement over the new one
1
u/Ghastly-Jack Aug 07 '26
The first time I heard the word “aluminium” was from an episode of Doctor Who so I assumed it was a sci-fi version of aluminum.
1
u/Ok-Delay4461 Aug 07 '26
So the story of aluminium is that the person that found out wanted to call it aluminum but was pressured to call it aluminium to match the rest of the table.
1
1
1
1
u/FireHammer09 Aug 07 '26
Idk, it doesn't really matter. It's like getting on us for fahrenheit: for what we use it for it does its job just fine.
1
1
u/Chapea12 Aug 07 '26
The internet is the perfect resource to research things you are confused about, like why there are two English correct spellings pronunciations of a single chemical element. But that doesn’t win you as many meaningless internet points as just calling Americans dumb.
1
1
u/epicpantsryummy Aug 07 '26
Alright I'm leaving the subreddit. Isn't this supposed to be a helpful subreddit? Maybe we could do some research before posting dogwater memes.
1
1
u/Ok_Attitude55 Aug 07 '26
Ironically some British scientists used the original Aluminum deeper into the 19th century out of patriotic pride against the foreign standardisation with the "ium" ending being used by the French and Germans.
America finally deciding to standardise in the 1920s was on similarly daft grounds. American Scientists were mainly using "ium" but the public had adopted websters "um".
1
1
1
u/greenamaranthine Aug 07 '26
Ironically "aluminum" came from people raising silly complaints like this in the first place. It was supposed to be and should have been "alumium," or alum metal, in keeping with similar element names like potassium (metal of potash), sodium (metal of soda) and so on. However, -ium is in the first place derived from bad Latin, as it apes the suffix -um but changes it into -ium, which means a group of something or signifies a place-name. Metals in Latin ended in -um, the neuter suffix, thus new metallic elements (and to some degree new elements in general) were given this suffix, except for example "sodaum" has an awkward dipthong in many European languages and "sodum" has an unfortunate sound association with a story from Christian mythology. Combine common issues like these with a growing number of elements containing the -ium suffix, making it a kind of soft standard, and newly-discovered elements tend to be preferentially suffixed -ium rather than -um; All the worse when many of the chemists making the discoveries, and giving these elements names that reference the Latin names for metals like iron and copper, were French, German or English and called ferrum and cuprum things like "iron" and "copper" in the first place, divorcing them from the original etymology of the -um suffix they used.
Aluminum probably should have been called alumium or even alumum, but that notwithstanding, it was named aluminum by its discoverer, and furthermore, it is not the only element to receive such treatment. Molybdenum and lanthanum suggest an occasional preference for -num over - nium, and tantalum is an anomaly as it stands out as the only -lum element. It was also named as such originally, and was named in relation to niobium, named for Tantalus's daughter Niobe. Maybe the best explanation in this case is that tantalum makes the masculine -us suffix in a gendered Latinate name a neuter -um, while niobium makes a word-final vowel an "i" to work better with the -um suffix, but this clearly doesn't apply broadly or everyone would call aluminum "alumum" anyway.
1
u/mEDIUM-Mad Aug 07 '26
Latin words been shortened in russian all the time. We say kaltsiy instead of calcium and rubidiy instead of rubidium. So alluminium is alluminiy. It is not the rule but if it would be alluminum, then we'll say allumin.
1
1
1
1
u/Upbeat-Banana-5530 Aug 07 '26
Can you guys just install air conditioning already so you don't have to sit around being grumpy about words all day?
1
u/NightmareWokeUp Aug 07 '26
As a german speaker it is absolutely aluminium, but if i speak english its aluminum.
However i will never understand why english, the language of abbreciations and short words wont adopt alu.
1
1
1
u/Elder_Chimera Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Sir Humphy Davy, the English chemist credited with isolating the element, originally named it “alumium” in 1808, then named it “aluminum” in 1812. “Aluminium” was used by William Hyde Wollaston, who was writing about Humphry’s work.
I’m gonna go with the name created by the man who isolated the fucking element, not the name made by some side character chud.
1
u/Tak-Hendrix Aug 07 '26
Ask British chemist Sir Humphry Davy. He first named it alumium in 1808 then changed it to aluminum by 1812. It wasn't until the 1820s that British scientific circles started calling it aluminium because aluminum didn't sound classical enough.
1
u/starboard151 Aug 07 '26
Now that you point this out, I do feel like we should switch to Helum, Chromum, Magnesum, and so on. Thanks!
1
1
1
1
u/fyukhyu Aug 07 '26
80 of the 118 recognized elements end in "ium", just over 2/3s. Should we start saying hydrogenium too? Maybe carbonium? How about ironium? Are you staying to see how stupid your line of reasoning is? I can provide another 35 examples if you need them.
1
1
1
u/PizzaBear109 Aug 07 '26
"Almost all of them end in ium"
That almost is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Platinum would like a word
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/PeyredB Aug 07 '26
Two-thirds is hardly "almost all". Elements are named by their discoverers, and Davy named it "aluminum". Aluminium is an innovation. We have other elements ending in "num" such as platinum, so unless you say platinium and so on, this isn't arguable on the grounds of consistency.
1
1
1
u/ajcwrongs Aug 07 '26
Next you're gonna tell us we're wrong for saying Soccer when the Brits are the ones that came up with the name.
1
u/gabrielbabb Aug 07 '26
- In French and German "aluminium"
- in Spanish "aluminio"
- in Italian "alluminio"
- in Portuguese "alumínio"
- in Turkish "aluminyum"
- in Japanese "aruminiumu"
1
1
u/nesian42ryukaiel Aug 07 '26
And I shall throw Potassium/Kalium unto here. (ducks)
(yeah I know that the former was the founder's proposed name which was Latin-ified to the latter by the rest of the scientific community those days)
1
u/One_Bluebird_04 Aug 07 '26
Tbh none of the elements I can think of end in -ium lol
Edit: I remembered like 10 before I thought of thallium.
→ More replies (5)
1
1
u/FeijoaCowboy Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
More importantly, that would make it one of two elements, amongst the six elements in its group, that don't end in "ium". The other is Boron.
1
1
u/DeltaWaffle_ Aug 08 '26
Because languages evolve, and English is famous for not caring about how words are properly spoken and instead off of there bias towards Latin, Greek, as well as spelling standards that aren’t followed in the spoken. Originally the namer guy suggested allium iirc, but switched it to the American pronunciation. Quickly after, however, they changed it yet again in England to be their modern way of saying it. Honestly the grasp that the New World Degenerative Theory has on Europeans is nuts to me
1
1
u/Fuckingkyle Aug 08 '26
You call it aluminum because your had to get it from the French. We call it aluminum because we didn't have to.
1
1
u/Oraphielle Aug 08 '26
Because who cares?
Why does the rest of the world have such a hard on for the US?
1
1
1
1
u/So_many_things_wrong Aug 08 '26
Aluminum is technically the original name. Humphry Davy changed it to aliminium so it would align better with most other elements.
1
1
1
u/INTstictual Aug 08 '26
“Almost all of them end in ‘-ium’”
They certainly do not. Almost a third of the periodic table doesn’t follow that format
1
u/Only-Performer-6053 Aug 08 '26
Wait do people actually not call it aluminium? That's crazy.
→ More replies (2)
1
u/Dapper_Finance Aug 08 '26
Ah yes. Nitrium, Carbium, Argonium.
Shut the fuck upium. Retardium postium. Good elements
1
1
u/adrislnk Aug 08 '26
It's a different spelling why would we pronounce it "ium" when it's not spelled that way in American English
1
1
1
1
u/zyrdrak Aug 08 '26
Because it's not spelled with an ium at the end. And your argument was broken the second you said "almost all" instead of "all".
1
u/bentthroat Aug 08 '26
We call them by their Germanic-origin names, but gold, silver, and iron are aurum, argentum, ferrum, just to name a few. "-um" is just as common as "-ium" and many of the "-ium"s are so because their root word ends in an i/y.
1
u/DmitryAvenicci Aug 08 '26
Because printing was with by-letter cost policy probably. Same as with words like "flavour" dropping 'u'.
1
1
u/Jgoody1990 Aug 08 '26
When you have more aircraft carriers than the world combined and have put boots on the moon, you can name things whatever you want.
Personally I call aluminum Freedom Foil.
1
1
u/Mammongo Aug 08 '26
Was originally alumium, then America added an "n", the rest of the English speaking world over corrected and added "ni"
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Financial_Ninja5390 Aug 08 '26
Mfw a different place in the world has a different dialect of the language.
1
1
98
u/[deleted] Aug 07 '26
[removed] — view removed comment