The one that gets me is they bitch about calling the season Fall. They claim that Americans are so basic and stupid that we can only think to name the season after the leaves falling. They think that the name Autumn (which we also use), borrowed from French, is a far better name for the season.

First of all, we get it. You have your nose firmly up the collective asses of the French, Britain. It's a very pretty language, but maybe you could stop butchering their language for 5 minutes if you're going to be criticizing others for their English.

Second, you are the ones who came up with the name "Fall", Brits. Fall is indeed short for "The Fall of the Leaf". That term predates the US entirely, by almost two centuries, at least. And while you may think to judge us for continuing to use such an obvious name, I have bad news. Because you still use its complement, Spring, short for "The Spring of the Leaf". Say what you will about American English, but at least, in this, we're consistent.

A friend of mine from my TV days was working in South Africa when they hosted the association football World Cup and wound up talking to a woman who worked for the Football Association (the sport’s governing body in England and the reason the sport is called association football). She was angrily insisting to him that Americans invented the name “soccer” and that it never had that name in England. She might have been inebriated, but that was a lot to be confidently incorrect about her own employer.

Aluminum by Davies, who first isolated it and therefore gets to name it. Then 'alumunium' by Wollaston, who didn't and therefore doesn't.

Same Brits tricked us into calling it soccer then changed their minds.

Mr.Webster of dictionary fame decided to only use Aluminum in his publication so that took over.

The bigger player here is probably Charles Martin Hall, who invented* a cheap method of refining it. Turns out yeah, if it's marketed and sold as aluminum in the US that's what people will know it as.

Although I guess it is possible Webster's dictionary influenced Hall's naming choice.

I wouldn't mind if we went back to calling it alumium, though.

* as a sidenote, also invented in France in the same year (coincidence) by Paul Héroult, thus called the Hall-Héroult process

Proof.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Gfxm2qqghsQ

Mendelevium? Ruthorfordium? Uranium? Plutonium?

Y'all are out here gonna ignore "Lieutenant" as 'LeFtenant' ?

It seems to have the same reason: English scholars thinking that it would be smart to adopt an orthography that doesn't match the pronounciation, to be more consistent with latin. i.e. the opposite of what modern-day spelling reforms usually try to do.

https://nowiknow.com/the-silent-and-not-so-silent-l/

Sometimes, I intentionally pronounce the 'b' in "subtle", just to make it clear I'm not.

Picking 3 letters in the middle of the word is strange to me. I think we should call it "asser"