WordsWordsWords

In a post a couple of weeks ago, I talked about one of the many differences between British and American English—their choice of singular vs. plural treatment of collective nouns. Today’s post is about a spelling and pronunciation difference.

The Professor just finished reading The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements, by Sam Kean. Seriously. She is always reading these weird, semi-boring books about things like the evolution of the metropolitan sewer system in modern history, or about some awful disease (explored in excruciating detail—scurvy was the latest) or about some bizarre cultural, gastronomic or sexual practice from somewhere in the world at some point in history. (Don’t even ask me about the one where somewhere in the world they cut off the top of a monkey’s skull and eat its brains while it’s still alive.) While I would more or less rather slit my wrists and bleed out than read an entire book about scurvy or the periodic table, I get two great benefits from her unquenchable thirst for esoteric knowledge. First of all, this pretty much makes her a walking encyclopedia of arcane information. You’d be surprised how handy this can be when the occasional need for some little-known fact arises.¹

What I really love, though, is that she reads me all the good parts! I am treated to all the cleverest and most interesting portions of these books without having to endure the rest.² Because she knows me well, “all the good parts” naturally include any etymologies mentioned.

That’s how I learned why Brits (and everyone else in the English-speaking world but us) say “aluminium” and Americans say “aluminum.”

Aluminium/aluminum was so named because it was initially extracted from alum in 1825. For the first 60 years that it was around, it was difficult to purify and was considered a precious metal. According to the book, “…the minor emperor Napoleon III reserved a prized set of aluminium cutlery for special guests at banquets. (Less favored guests used gold knives and forks.)” In 1886, one Charles Hall discovered a process that used electricity to free aluminum from the compound in which it was contained. He went on to found Alcoa in Pittsburgh. The price to manufacture aluminum products plummeted. Now, after you drink a soda, you throw away/recycle what would have initially been about $265 worth of aluminum (in today’s dollars). It’s the real thing indeed.

And the name difference? In the early 19^th century, chemists used both spellings, but eventually chose the spelling that was analogous to barium, magnesium, sodium and strontium. We don’t know whether the first time it was spelled on Alcoa promotional literature as “aluminum” rather than “aluminium” was a mistake, but Charles Hall liked it. He thought it aligned his product more with that classy metal platinum. Kean says, “His new metal caught on so quickly and grew so economically important that ‘aluminum’ became indelibly stamped on the American psyche.”
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¹ We also totally kill at team trivia.
² If I’m being honest, the boring parts are useful too. I sometimes struggle with insomnia, and she reads me to sleep.

I’ve previously spoken in this blog about common names, and about how the prevalence of various names has changed over the course of decades. One of the names discussed in that previous post has not only prevalence going for it, but incredible proliferation as well. Over the years, I’ve been interested to find out that all of the following names are translations or descendants of the name John–Iohannes in Latin and Ioannis or Iannis in Greek (all of which also have other spelling variations).

John/Jon/Johnny
Jane/Janie
Jean (French male or English female)
Jeanne/Jeannie/Jeanine/Jeanette
Joan/Joanne/Joanna
Ian
Sean/Shawn
Shawna/Shauna
DeShawn/DeShaun (primarily African American)
Sinead
Siobhan
Johan
Ivan (in English, EYE-vən; in Spanish, Iván, pronounced ee-VAHN, also male)
Ivana
Yvonne
Vanna
Evan
Jan/Jaan (pronounced yahn—Slavic)
Jana (YAHN-a)
Janis/Jaane/Jani (and many other similar in various European Languages)
Janet/Jan
Janice
Juan
Juana
Giovanni/Giovanna
Hank
Hanna
Hans (but not Franz)

Google around, and you’ll find lists with literally hundreds of derivations of this simple name. I’ve chosen the above to demonstrate the incredible variety that the derivations have taken. Who would guess that Ivana Trump and Hank Hill have essentially the same first name?

My private investigator licensing exam is scheduled for this Saturday, February 26th. I’m dedicating my time this week to studying. See you soon!

Graeme Weatherston / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My blogging software, Word Press, has a spam filter to prevent junk comments from being posted. I don’t know what algorithm it uses, but it works well. I’ve never had a spam comment go through, nor have I had a legitimate content caught in the spam filter.

I glance at the posts before deleting to make sure I don’t miss anything. They are a mixture of what you’d expect–pitches for Viagra knock-offs and penis enlargement products, together with porn and bogus university degrees. Ho hum. They mostly bore me.

Every once in a while, though, something so delightful comes through that I almost want to go ahead and post it. Maybe I will, even. Today’s spam comment of the day:

“Again corking read-up cheers loads for sharing, keep me posted I will be reading much of your posts in the future day!”

Intrepid Reader Sara, who has spent part of her working life in London, asks the following: “The Brits say, ‘The couple are crossing the street’ or ‘The team are playing well.’ I always thought this was incorrect. It should be ‘The couple is crossing the street’ and ‘The team is playing well.’ Have their brains simply become pickled over the years from too many visits to the corner pub? Who’s right?”

While you could say better than I, Sara, whether brain pickling has affected other aspects of British society, it’s not the case here. “Team” and “couple” are two members of a class of words called collective nouns—nouns that are singular, but that are made up of multiple individuals within that singular entity. Other examples frequently given are herd, faculty, and jury. Traditionally, as you’ve noted, British English has been more likely to use a plural verb with these nouns, while American English has opted for the singular.

However, many American grammar and usage guides recommend that the words be treated as singular OR plural, depending on whether the action is being performed by the group as a whole or by the members as individuals. Thus, one might say that the jury reaches a decision (as a group) or that the jury leave the courthouse (separately, proceeding to their respective destinations). Honestly, the latter sentence sounds totally wrong to me. In contrast, as I contemplate pronouns, “The jury reaches their decision” sounds just as correct to me, and maybe a little more so, than “The jury reaches its decision.” Something in my brain is acknowledging the dual singular/plural nature of that noun.

One of my favorite language reference books, Garner’s Modern American Usage, puts it this way: “These are questions more of local idiom than of correct or incorrect grammar.” Dr. Garner stresses consistency—pick a usage and stick with it, and make sure your verb forms match your pronouns. That’s good advice, and tells me that “reaches their” is probably not the best idea.

Recently I came across a great example of how we go back and forth between the singular and plural with collective nouns, even without thinking about it.

In the early ’90s, I loved Mike Myers on Saturday Night Live. He was just so brilliant in almost every role. I still remember and laugh at some of his comic bits, one of which is an installment of “Wayne’s World” [sadly, since removed from NBC’s website] in which Aerosmith makes a guest appearance. Over the last couple weeks, I watched it at least four times as I thought about and wrote this post. I am still laughing! You gotta love a skit where Tom Hanks plays the roadie saying “Sibilance, sibilance, sibilance” into the microphone. The piece includes not only five synonyms for vomit and the term “bitchin’ lips,” but also the phrases “blueprint for the dictatorship of the proletariat” and “Stalinist-era party apparatchik.”

Myers, a Canadian, gives us a little insight into our topic. The skit is 9 minutes, 15 seconds long. At 2:10, he exclaims, “Aerosmith is in my breakfast nook!” But at 5:57, he says, “Aerosmith are here!!” Only a linguist watches Saturday Night Live and sits there thinking about the slippery nature of singular vs. plural verb usage with collective nouns.

Go watch it. Seriously. It might be the best nine minutes of your day.
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¹ 3^rd ed., 2009, p. 16