Rotten Tanx wrote:Anyway, bottom line is England wins cuz we pronounce AND spell Aluminium correctly. Aloominum my arse.
I knew I didn't have to wait long until someone pointed this out, and now comes the satisfaction of me pointing out to you that your argument is bogus.
First off, what makes one spelling "correct" versus another? They both refer to the same thing and are understood to be referring to the same thing. Therefore, they are both correct.
Regardless of this, it turns out that the metal named by Sir Humphry Davy was called
aluminum a number of years *before* he changed it to
aluminium later, to satisfy his snooty colleagues who thought it rang better with the names of other metals.
Funnily enough, the American dictionaries (Webster's, etc) adopted your sacred
aluminium as the spelling until 1925 when it was changed by the American Chemical Society to
aluminum.
Growing up in Ireland, I would always hear this argument bandied about. "Stupid feckin yanks can't even be bothered to handle the extra syllable", or "They drop the "u" from "colour", what idiots!". What a load of horseshit. It's called
evolution. Language evolves just like everything else, and when you start to make assumptions based on natural evolution, you lose all credibility.
Sorry to rant so much, but this one drives me up the wall everytime I hear it.
http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/aluminium.htm