Deliberate mistakes

Moving on to issue 242 cover pic, where can I get on of those hovering lamps?

Mick

I recall reading that Faraday(?) originally spelled it 'aluminum' but changed his mind a few days later.

I will now check and discover I am wrong.

<edit> Yes, I am completely wrong, the true story is even more fantasical.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Different_endings

Neil

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 17/05/2016 13:56:57

A good example of why the English language is like it is "Aluminium sounds more classical". The vagaries of English grammar were confused by grammarians insisting that it conforms to Latin models with which, not being a romance language, it struggles. Thus "was you" -perfectly acceptable in the 18th century became "were you" in 'correct' grammar. Similary, American spellings with their loss of redundant letters were largely the result of a campaign by Noah Webster to simplify spelling, only a few examples of which stuck. Bill Bryson's "Mother Tounge" reveals all in his eminently readable style.

When I started secondary school in 1966 we had to be taught English grammar before they could start teaching us Latin. Our caretaker had been a Polish signwriter in a former life - just inside the main entrance was a beautifully painted sign he'd made "Queen Mary's Grammar School. Please drive SLOW". My niece, who is in year 6 (that's 10 going on 11) already knows all this stuff - there was a SATS test published in a newspaper last week that had me completely stumped.

Rod

I don't give a damn about what I call the american (wrong) way of spelling aluminium - it has always been aluminium to me, and it always will be aluminium. (I can't afford to make thing out of platinum or tantalum)

I'm more interested in what I can do with the stuff than how to spell it!

To set matters straight, aluminium was discovered by Humphry Davy.

I quote Bill Bryson in his book "A Short History of Nearly Everything": The confusion over aluminium/aluminum arose because of some uncharacteristic indecisiveness on Davy's part. When he first isolated the element in 1808 he called it alumium. For some reason he thought the better of that and changed it to aluminum four years later. Americans dutifully adopted the new term, but many British users disliked aluminium, pointing out that it disrupted the ​-ium pattern established by sodium, calcium and strontium, so they added a vowel and a syllable.

So there you have it. and if you really want me to confuse you, I can start writing in the Doric, as spoken by the people (sorry, quines and loons) who are my neighbours!

Mike,

I think your spell checker has got the better of you

But I'm sure what you meant to write is correct. Bryson's good , isn't he!

Rod

Edited By Roderick Jenkins on 17/05/2016 16:33:12

Rod: You're quite right - I had a hell of a battle with the spell-checker, and it finally got the better of me! I don't know how to switch the ******* thing off!

After seven pages of grammar and semantics, we STILL have not discovered the mistake, (deliberate or otherwise).

Could it be the failures to obey health and Safety guidelines in operating a machine with unguarded gears and driving belt, or the lack of Safety Glasses (as opposed to wearing plain spectacles)?

It can't be that the chuck lacks the jaw lying in the chip tray?

Will someone, PLEASE, put us out of our misery, by telling the answer.

Howard

Rod: Thanks again - due to your prompt I've managed to switch autocorrect off, after a 20-minute staring match with the wretched machine. Aluminum Aluminium. So there!

And Bubble has conveniently disappeared somewhere into the worldwide web laughing at just what a LARGE cat he has put amongst the pigeons.
Someone should find a great big pin to pop the little sadist.

I have taken the unusual step of emailing Jim to ask him to put you loons and quines out of your misery.

Neil

Will we ever get a SINGEL or MULTIPEL answer to this. Only the Ed knows !!

Neil: Fit like, ma loon?

Shwmae buttie!

The classic answer to that is "nae bad foos yersel"

Spel chekir disna like doric

Mike, in your part of the Moray coast they spik a version of Buckie fisher Gaelic not true doric but then we could stray on to the alumimum aluminium debate

Dod, I am a newcomer in this part of the world, although I have lived here for 20 years. As a mere observer, it seems as if Doric changes almost from village to village as you move along the Moray Firth coast. The most entertaining speaker was a female colleague when I was editor of the local paper in Banff: I had just about learned to understand her when I retired after doing the job for six years!

Ironically though, the Seppos were right on some counts. ISTR that British English generally (but not always) used the Latin-derived -or and -er endings until Doc Johnson came along circa 1750 in his newfangled dictionary and started using the less common French derived -our and -re endings, just because he liked French.

On Aluminum, have the Americans come up with a way to chromum plate their aluminum? Or do they still rely on chromium?

I think we have gone from deliberate mistakes to mistaken deliberations!

BTW, don't you just hate the overuse of exclamation marks like that? Screamers, they are known as in some newspaper circles. (also as dog's dicks in others!)

MisTakEs

I am an expert at PHD level.

Hopefully one day I will make less of them.

Regards
John