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My God, header frenzy!:
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Bruce Schlickbernd writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Ross Crawford writes:
> > In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Bruce Schlickbernd writes:
> > > In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Santosh Bhat writes:
> > > > Is that metal Aloomenum (which I'm sure Americans are keeping secret from
> > > > the rest of the world) actually useful for anything?
> > > >
> > > > Santosh
> > >
> > > How else would you pronounce aluminum? Can't be five syllables with only
> > > four vowels. ;-)
> >
> > Except on most periodic tables, you'll see it spelt "Aluminium". Most
> > dictionaries list one as a variant of the other.
> >
> > ROSCO
>
> Hmmmm, well, my father-in-law - who has has multiple degrees in chemistry
> from Cal Tech and teaches chemistry - spells it aluminum. Nyahh, nyahh,
> nyahh! :-P
Sure, those Cal Tech boys can rig up an RF unit to screw with
the Rose Bowl scoreboard, but can they really spell...? It's
like asking someone with a doctorate in pediatrics (paediatrics
for the ANZAC/UK crowd) to take out your spleen because, well,
he or she *is* a doctor...
I thought all chemists simply knew chemical names from the
two-letter IUPAC-approved designations, anyways. ;) Sr-90
BAD!
> And since you note both are listed, it kinda reduces you first comment's
> meaningfullness, don't it! :-)
Not really--well, at least not the reverse tweak: "Since
when is it al-YEW-min-ee-um? Did you keep forgetting what
the third letter is?"
> Checked the periodic chart over at the micro-biologists' building: Aluminum.
> More nyahhs!
>
> Bruce
>
> (of course, since a Brit coined the word...)
Yes, but see, this all gets back to the heart of the matter,
the implicit assumptions that [rant coming!]:
1) British pronunciations, having remained on the Ancient
Mother Soil, are therefore 'correct' by being 'British.' This
is true even when they're obviously the end-products of
centuries upon centuries of lazy slurring by the illiterate, e.g.,
'Worcestershire' being pronounced /woostershur/, 'Leicester'
being /lester/, 'Chiswick' being /chizik/, etc etc (or &c., &c.,),
ad nauseum, they're 'correct' because it's part of Tradition. [1]
Same deal with Vincent van Gogh being /van goff/.
2) "American" ('Muricun) spellings and pronunciations are,
therefore, the bastardized and internally inconsistent
leavings of proper English, and not the result of the single
greatest creolization in history that has created a dialect
every bit as vibrant and *valid* as that in the United Kingdom,
yet one that is still *conversant* with it. In short, English
as spoken in the US--which itself varies regionally--is
somehow invalid because it's a degenerate child language.
As the Afrikaners hear from the Dutch, and the Dutch from
the Germans, "Your language is just a derivative of the
[implicitly superior] original, which we speak." Hogwash,
in spite of all the Frieslander jokes floating about on this
part of the Continent.
3) The grammar and spelling used in the USA are quite often new
creations or shortcuts that no proper speaker of English
would use or has ever used, e.g., 'got' and sticking "z" (or zed,
if you want to be correct) into things. First of all, 'got' may
have fallen into disuse (or out of use, as we say in the US) in
the UK, but it was very common in the eighteenth century
and before. As for -ise/-ize (and -our/-or and the -t and -en
past tense conjugations [2]), I've been looking through tons of
official letters in the last two months in the archives of two
of Britain's most prestigious Learned Societies--the Royal
Society and the Royal Geographical Society--and the British
spellers don't have a consensus on these matters as late as 1920!
I was taken aback to see Lord Aberdeen spelling out 'favor'
and 'harmonize,' or the Scot Sir David Gill spelling 'polarize,'
but I suppose that's because of Tradition.
4) The above are true even when the practitioners of the
United States [6] dialect outnumber all other native speakers of
English in the world. It's part of the old Imperial mind-
set that still lurks in the national psyche, the idea
that England's progeny should pay some kind of homage
and elevate the Mother Country above themselves willingly,
as a grateful child should a parent. (This mindset was
originally more than just language--the Commonwealth as
it exists today was in fact less ambitious than the original
schemes for Imperial Federation, which could not guarantee
that Britain would remain at its head without making this
point statuatory or based on the nebulous concept of race--
which would have destroyed it. Imperial Defence schemes
had the same basic failings until the really populous chunks
like India and South Africa were out of the picture after
1947/8.) In this category of ungrateful, petulant children,
who can possibly out-do the original Rebels, the United
States? It's not at all coincidence that the joke 'revocation
of Independence' email floating around was in the form of a
*royal* edict--imagine if it came with the names of Blair,
Prescott, and Cook at the bottom instead? It wouldn't have
touched such a nerve (funny or otherwise) then, I reckon.
It's an act of high Imperial Britain, not modern bureaucratic
Britain.
I'm certainly not going to say that everyone holds the above
mindset. But it exists as an undercurrent in print and on radio
and TV in the UK--and USians can't help by either turning the other
cheek and tacitly affirming the beliefs or by becoming combative and
defensive and thus cementing the image that we're all violence-
doped Yahoos (as opposed to Huoyhnhnms, who can't get their hooves
around the trigger anyways?). There's no way out against such
an institutional mindset--we're an easy target, as the biggest
kid on the block, and we suffer our own inferiority complex because
we've long held a European sense of history and culture to be ideal,
yet have no way to get said same (without moving it to the US, like
the Cloisters on Manhattan Island[3]). So in a sense, USians aid
and abet [4] the British Imperial mindset by accepting this position
of cultural and intellectual inferiors we've been assigned--anyone
seen the Polaner's All Fruit commercials lately? We don't care
as a general rule because at the end of the day we're still the
world's single greatest economic and military power and can
console ourselves with that, at least until our Imperial Age ends.
Just a little rant on culture and history. It doesn't affect
in the slightest my strong Anglophilia or my respect for Britain,
but it does suggest that this whole 'British versus American English'
debate is wholly farcical, and that it's viewed almost entirely
through the lenses of pride and prejudice. If we wanted to be
fair, let's vote [5] among all the native speakers of English in
the world on whose language standards should be canonical...but
then, what qualifies a native speaker if we're not all speaking
the same language? ;)
best,
Lindsay
[1] We won't even get into what Londoners do with the name
'Marylebone.' How do they manage to extract all the vowels
and the 'y' from that word without hurting themselves?
[2] The conjugation issue is a sore one with me, only because
I rather like complicated conjugations like those for 'shave'
and 'prove.' Alas, they've become 'shaved' and 'proved' as
of late--but 'riven' remains 'riven.'
[3] I went to visit Shakespeare's Birthplace on Sunday, just to
see it--here's the true origin of Modern English, no matter
whose it is--and I had to laugh upon seeing the impetus for
raising money to buy the house: a rumour that P.T. Barnum
wanted to buy it and move it to the United States! The
horror! ;)
[4] 'aid and abet' is a colloquialization of legalese that is
itself redundant--how can you abet without aiding, or aid
without abetting? But its use implies legal proceeding,
so I'm using it. Nyah.
[5] But keep the counting out of Florida, for goodness sake.
This rant is about language, not about the ability to run
a decent election...:) That's a failing of the US Imperial
Mindset.
[6] Inserted late, didn't want to recollate: I try to avoid
'American' because it implies that the US *is* America.
Canada, Mexico, and many other countries might disagree.
But that's part of, yes, the current US Imperial Mindset.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: NOT the Queen's English ('Muricans)
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| (...) Okay, there. Pared down. Happy? :-) (...) That depends: engineers can't spell, scientists are better about it. (...) You can call me Al, but you don't need to call me Aluminium? (...) Nothing to make it a long U. The root word is Al-um, not (...) (23 years ago, 13-Mar-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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