FW: REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE (fwd)

[Rudolph C Troike]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 00:08:44 -0700
From: ctb <ctb at U.ARIZONA.EDU>
To: ENGLISH at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: FW: REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE (fwd)

Rudy--

That "Revocation of Independence" argument seems entirely reasonable to
me except for the matter of the pronunciation and spelling of Brit
"aluminium" vs. correct Yank "aluminum."  I just couldn't live with
that.  This alloy was discovered, ca. 1805, by the Brit chemist Sir
Humphry Davy (1778-1829), who named it and pronounced it "aluminum" on
the basis of what he knew about alum and also on the basis of recent
French ("alumine") and German ("Aluminit") chemical discoveries.  Davy's
Brit colleagues, with some little knowledge of Latin, wrongly assumed
that he had surely meant to call the alloy "aluminium" on the basis of
false analogy with sodium and other such elements or minerals that they
were aware of, and they soon contamined the usage of this word in
England though not in America in the time of Noah Webster and the War of
1812.  In this instance it is the Yanks, with their felix-culpa
ignorance of Latin, who have preserved the historically correct usage.
The same goes, of course, for quite a few other Brit-Yank divergences.
Two examples that always come to mind first are the pronunciations of
"lieutenant" and "schedule."  Never mind all those other words from
Gallic and Hellenic populations on whom we Anglophones--both Brits and
Yanks in one measure or another--have long ago declared linguistic if
not nuclear war.

c