Cambridge Chat (previously New Cambridge Students Entry 2004)

In fact, you cant moan about the aluminium one, the americans actually HAVE IT RIGHT for once. I read it in a book and was utterly horrified. All these years i had considered americans to be idiots with their pronounciation and then i suddenly just felt big headed and snobbish. This is the story:

The guy who discovered Aluminium originally called it Aluminum. But a few years later, the Royal society in England decided all new elements should end in "-ium", because that's what stuck up rich people do. So they decided that Aluminum should be renamed Aluminium. But of course, the word Aluminum has already got over to america. And although they now accept the new spelling, the pronounciation has remained the same. So we were the ones who changed things there, not the americans.

Lol...yeah..i've always found Frasier is more of a wit humour...whereas friends is more slapstick humour...both very good though!

Don't forget about how they renamed the first Harry Potter book to the Sorceror's Stone...as they thought most americans wouldn't know what a philosopher was

I'm sure they're not all like that though...

G

In fact, you cant moan about the aluminium one, the americans actually HAVE IT RIGHT for once. I read it in a book and was utterly horrified. All these years i had considered americans to be idiots with their pronounciation and then i suddenly just felt big headed and snobbish. This is the story:

The guy who discovered Aluminium originally called it Aluminum. But a few years later, the Royal society in England decided all new elements should end in "-ium", because that's what stuck up rich people do. So they decided that Aluminum should be renamed Aluminium. But of course, the word Aluminum has already got over to america. And although they now accept the new spelling, the pronounciation has remained the same. So we were the ones who changed things there, not the americans.

i thought lead to gold was alchemy!

The guy who discovered Aluminium originally called it Aluminum.

aluminium n. Okay, so it's not the most cryptic of language differences, but Americans spell this "aluminum". We pronounce it differently as well; we Brits really do say "ahl-yoo-minny-um". I've had a multitude of mail about this and as usual a lot of it is at odds. I can at least say that Hans Ørsted, the Danish gentleman who discovered it in 1824, had based its name on the Latin word "alumen", denoting the mineral alum. The difference in spelling seems to have originated when very early printed material advertising his talks on the subject contained the two different spellings in error. The general consensus seems to be that he had originally used the "British" spelling (bourne out by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry's use of it, and the "ium" suffix that already graced many metallic elements at the time) but as he clearly didn't make any efforts to correct anyone, perhaps he didn't care too much.

I remember when Paul Merton commented that they had to rename Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to something the Americans would understand, so they changed it to burger. To be fair though, I think the name change was only because the publishers thought children wouldn't be interested in the book if they thought it was about philosophers, and not because they wouldn't know what a philosopher was...although since the Philosopher's Stone is a centuries-old concept and the Sorcerer's Stone isn't, it was still a bit strange.

I thought that was really annoying! What's the point of having it based on mythology when they go and change it because people are too dumb?!
Oh and btw the James Bond film License to Kill was originally to be called License Revoked, but the American audience didn't know what revoked meant.

somehow i feel these are urban legends.....but then again, you really can't take anything for granted with the american public

i thought lead to gold was alchemy!

It is. Alchemists sought for what they called 'philosopher's stone', which would allow them to turn lead (or any other metal) to gold.

And once they found it, they decided it cost too much money to use it... Idiots!

Actually I think they found that a true philosopher's stone was more interested in the fact that lead could be turned to gold than actually doing anything about it. Sitting around and pontificating was all that it - like most philosophers - was any good at.

What is the Matrix??

'tis too pretentious, is what it is.

3rd was just an excuse for a gigantic action-blowing up stuff-killing fest.....i liked the third one.

Hahaha Well, I wouldn't have minded not understanding the pretentious dialogue if the Wachowski brothers had convinced me that they knew what they were talking about, but it was just so fake it was annoying.