One that gets me is aluminum
Pronounced... a lu min um
Not... alu mini um
It's both! Most of the world spells it "aluminium," so they're pronouncing it correctly. The US and Canada use "aluminum," for reasons I don't remember. I'm pretty sure both are accepted pronunciations to chemists.
From Wikipedia:
"Etymology
Two variants of the metal's name are in current use, aluminium (pronunciation: /ˌæl(j)ʊˈmɪniːəm/) and aluminum (/əˈluːmɪnəm/)—besides the obsolete alumium.
The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) adopted aluminium as the standard international name for the element in 1990 but, three years later, recognized aluminum as an acceptable variant. Hence their periodic table includes both.[61] IUPAC internal publications use either spelling in nearly the same number.[62]
Most countries use the spelling aluminium. In the United States and Canada, the spelling aluminum predominates.[16][63] The Canadian Oxford Dictionary prefers aluminum, whereas the Australian Macquarie Dictionary prefers aluminium. In 1926, the American Chemical Society officially decided to use aluminum in its publications; American dictionaries typically label the spelling aluminium as "chiefly British".[64][65]
(history stuff deleted...)
The -ium suffix conformed to the precedent set in other newly discovered elements of the time: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy isolated himself). Nevertheless, -um spellings for elements were not unknown at the time, as for example platinum, known to Europeans since the 16th century, molybdenum, discovered in 1778, and tantalum, discovered in 1802. The -um suffix is consistent with the universal spelling alumina for the oxide (as opposed to aluminia), as lanthana is the oxide of lanthanum, and magnesia, ceria, and thoria are the oxides of magnesium, cerium, and thorium respectively.
The aluminum spelling is used in the Webster's Dictionary of 1828. In his advertising handbill for his new electrolytic method of producing the metal in 1892, Charles Martin Hall used the -um spelling, despite his constant use of the -ium spelling in all the patents[58] he filed between 1886 and 1903. It has consequently been suggested[by whom?] that the spelling reflects an easier-to-pronounce word with one fewer syllable, or that the spelling on the flyer was a mistake.[citation needed] Hall's ********** of production of the metal ensured that aluminum became the standard English spelling in North America."
I trimmed a bit and added some bolding. The full link is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Etymology
At least no one uses alumium any more...
JR
