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Ilhares

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Aug 19, 2019
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Is it one of those things like how Amrit pronounces London? View attachment 5415967
The issue all stemmed from the guy who first named it. It had other names first, but then he (a Brit of some flavor, as I recall) called it Aluminum. That's how it became known in the US as well. Then the UK science committee or whoever said they didn't like that, it wasn't in line with the other element naming patterns, and changed it to Aluminium.

Yanks, as we often do, ignored it, because we hate extraneous letters in a lot of words for no good reason.
 

duckydoodoo

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Nov 9, 2023
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Yanks, as we often do, ignored it, because we hate extraneous letters in a lot of words for no good reason.
i thought americans did things cause they wanted to. and made up excuses to justify it only when questioned. that or ive been americaning wrong for decades now. nah, its right cause i say so.
 
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Ilhares

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Aug 19, 2019
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i thought americans did things cause they wanted to. and made up excuses to justify it only when questioned. that or ive been americaning wrong for decades now. nah, its right cause i say so.
Well, we're wildly off topic in here now, but the game title is "Something to Write About:" so I hope the mods don't get too irked with it.

This usually comes up with things like "Colour" and "Honour", and while I don't know the real etymological reasoning, I just joke about it being one more way that the USA points out that "We don't need U in our lives."

There are a good number of differences, and sometimes it goes the other way. In American English, you don't see people using the word "Connexion", unless they're idiots trying to look special for finding a 'new' spelling. We would write "Connection", and that difference is largely migrating back through UK English as well, though there are still some holdouts. Then there's the whole RE vs. ER when it comes to Meter, Theater and such.

And while you're absolutely not wrong that sometimes it's just "Because they wanted to", you also have to factor in the reality that a lot of it is simply "They're too stupid to know any better". I've seen so many of my fellow former schoolmates that demonstrably don't seem to know jack shit, and I don't grok how other than through willful ignorance, because we had the exact same education. Facts didn't change from one class to the next, there was no Fox News vs. CNN issue in my day, you simply all had the same source material.

I'm far from flawless, but ooh, they get me riled up some days. I had to live through the pre-Internet slow speed dialup days, when morons on the BBS systems started using good ol' L337 Sp43k. I said then, and I maintain to this very day, that nothing, ever, should be referred to as 'kewl'. Because if you said that, it most definitely could not be.
 

Avaron1974

Resident Lesbian
Aug 22, 2018
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If you're going to become the grammar policewoman of F95, you've taken on a fulltime job! :ROFLMAO:
I don't care about grammar normally, unless it's to mock an idiot.

I only mentioned it this time because I have an irrational hatred for certain words with un at the start.

It's just everytime I see someone type "unfun" it makes me think they are ..... shall we say "special". I like Tsoni though so I shall forgive them for irking me and making my eye twitch.
 
4.60 star(s) 141 Votes