Aluminium (was Re: Fun pairs)

Subject: Aluminium (was Re: Fun pairs)
From: "Ridder, Fred" <F -dot- Ridder -at- DIALOGIC -dot- COM>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 14:34:30 -0400

Jane Bergen wrote (in part):

>When I worked overseas, my British-trained counterparts said
>"al-you-MIN-ee-um" where we yanks say "al-OO-min-um" and I always
>thought that was funny. I may be wrong, but I think we spell it the same
>(aluminum?).

They are different words. Here in the US, we refer to most common
alloys of the metallic element aluminum by the same name as the
element itself. In the UK, they use the word aluminium (note the
second "i") to refer to the metal to distinguish it from the element.
I've heard the story that the British name was originally a trademark,
but that may be a case of folk etymology.

Fred Ridder (mailto:f -dot- ridder -at- dialogic -dot- com)
Senior Technical Writer
Dialogic Corporation, Parsippany, NJ

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