6 ms·

Sort of how the chemists in the 18th and 19th centuries got to have all the fun. "I'll call it 'Aluminum.' No, wait! 'Aluminium!' Uh... ship that first prin

Sort of how the chemists in the 18th and 19th centuries got to have all the fun. "I'll call it 'Aluminum.' No, wait! 'Aluminium!' Uh... ship that first print run of my book with the wrong spelling to North America. Nobody will notice!" "I'll call it Potassium, because it's found in potash." "That's not very creative." "Fine, I'll call it Kalium and give it a symbol of K." "Where'd you get Kalium from?" "Well, it's very alkaline, you see. It's from potash, after all." "That's still not very creative!" "Fine. We'll call it Potassium, but give it a symbol of K. Happy now?"

vidarh 8y ago
It's still called Kalium in a bunch of languages.
- staticautomatic 8y ago
  Is that also the case for "natrium?"
  - vidarh 8y ago
    Yep. Natrium is used in Norwegian at least.
  - Confusion 8y ago
    Certainly: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/natrium https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/natrium And those are also mostly the countries using Kalium: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/kalium https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/kalium
    - samatman 8y ago
      Can't forget Wolfram!
    - DrPhish 8y ago
      It misses Japanese, which uses German for a great many scientific and medical loanwords: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A6%E3%83%A0 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A6%E...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - charriu 8y ago
    German has both of those.
- da_chicken 8y ago
  Yes, but that's not funny. The story about Aluminum isn't completely correct, either.