Brits talk

[bravomail]

https://www.rd.com/culture/confusing-british-phrases/
I could not guess 99%!

 

[amirm]

I know about half of them from watching technical youtube videos which are dominated by Brits, or Australians.

A recent one is "bobby dazzler" which is missing from the list. I hear this from a British metal detector expert who uses it when he discovers a rare find. "It is a bobby dazzler..."

 

[cjfrbw]

It serves them right that they don't always even understand each other. Sorting out the accents on British detective shows can be the boggle.

 

[Thomas savage]

These are all run of the mill expressions, try some cockney rhyming slang that will really mash your swede.

 

[sergeauckland]

These are all run of the mill expressions, try some cockney rhyming slang that will really mash your swede.

You're having a giraffe!
S

 

[Pluto]

Sorry, I can't hand around, I have to go for a hit and a miss.

Later

as it happens, I actually went for a miss and a hit.

 

[L5730]

It might be wrong, but I read somewhere that Aluminium, the non-magnetic metal that drinks cans are made from, is actually pronounced correctly by Americans and it is rather the spelling that is wrong. Comes from the building of new names for things and Greek or Latin, and it should not have been an -inium, but rather an -inum. Us British pronounce it correctly as spelled, but it is incorrectly spelled.
It still doesn't make it any easier on my ears when I hear "Aloomin'm".

Amusing how many different ways there are of saying things on this tiny little island. After all Britain (I tend to think of the Great in the full name, like Greater Manchester or Greater London, the larger surrounds) consists of mainland UK regions/countries of England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland, whilst part of the United Kingdom, is not part of Britain, Great or otherwise.

I'm probably being difficult but I do struggle to hear what some folks are saying on TV. There tends to be a lot of Northern folks doing voice over announcements of the next show or whatever on Channel 4, and I just can't understand some of the accents. I kind of like the old BBC style of using some toff to voice over, at least I understood them, for the most part. Nothing against Northern folks, heck, if it was regional and they East Anglian accents on ITV/Anglia channel, I'd be just as screwed, and I live there!

 

[mansr]

It might be wrong, but I read somewhere that Aluminium, the non-magnetic metal that drinks cans are made from, is actually pronounced correctly by Americans and it is rather the spelling that is wrong. Comes from the building of new names for things and Greek or Latin, and it should not have been an -inium, but rather an -inum. Us British pronounce it correctly as spelled, but it is incorrectly spelled.
It still doesn't make it any easier on my ears when I hear "Aloomin'm".

There are lots of elements ending in -ium, many of those having the -nium suffix. For -inium, we have gadolinium, actinium, protactinium, and einsteinium (which doesn't really count). The only -inum element is platinum. Molybdenum and lanthanum are the only other -num elements.

In the interest of consistency, I thus propose that platinum be renamed platinium. Not to be confused with plutonium.

 

[L5730]

Sir Humphry made a bit of a mess of naming this new element, at first spelling it alumium (this was in 1807) then changing it to aluminum, and finally settling on aluminium in 1812. His classically educated scientific colleagues preferred aluminium right from the start, because it had more of a classical ring, and chimed harmoniously with many other elements whose names ended in -ium, like potassium, sodium, and magnesium, all of which had been named by Davy.

-ium, because it just felt better.

It's clear that the shift in the USA from -ium to -um took place progressively over a period starting in about 1895, when the metal began to be widely available and the word started to be needed in popular writing. It is easy to imagine journalists turning for confirmation to Webster's Dictionary, still the most influential work at that time, and adopting its spelling. The official change in the US to the -um spelling happened quite late: the American Chemical Society only adopted it in 1925, though this was clearly in response to the popular shift that had already taken place. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) officially standardised on aluminium in 1990, though this has done nothing, of course, to change the way people in the US spell it for day to day purposes.

-ium, the current standard defined by IUPAC. If I am being told to wring crystallisation with a -z then I am sure as heck gonna carry on using -ium for that metal.

The -um suffix is consistent with the universal spelling alumina for the oxide (as opposed to aluminia); compare to lanthana, the oxide of lanthanum, and magnesia, ceria, and thoria, the oxides of magnesium, cerium, and thorium, respectively.

In 1812, British scientist Thomas Young[91] wrote an anonymous review of Davy's book, in which he objected to aluminum and proposed the name aluminium: "for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound."[92] This name did catch on: while the -um spelling was occasionally used in Britain, the American scientific language used -ium from the start.[93]

Argument over the name based on it's oxide. Technically it should be -um then?

https://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/2009/04/08/aluminum-versus-aluminium-wher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium

 

[SIY]

https://www.rd.com/culture/confusing-british-phrases/
I could not guess 99%!

I knew most of these from many visit to the UK and extensive correspondence (and back and forth visits) with Morgan ("Valve Amplifiers") Jones. I even ended up writing a small glossary that he put in his latest edition of "Building Valve Amplifiers." That said, when Yorkshiremen speak, I have trouble understanding. Ditto East End London.