Okay, 'aluminum' is patently at least odd because most other metals end in 'ium'.
Second, 'thirty-four' works that way because the 'thirty' is a single word. If we said 'three tens' it would have to be 'three tens and four'. Hence why it has to be 'two hundred and ...'. There seems to me to be a logic there based on how the words work.
Althought not platinum, molybdenum or tantalum. And it was produced from alumina, so I can understand why it was originally aluminum, but also why the official name changed later.
I agree with you on X hundreds and blah - it's clearly a list. "Three thousands, four hundreds, and fifty-six ones" - only slightly cut down.
I say what I feel comfortable with. I'm happy for other people to do likewise too :->
I'd be likely to say Twenty-Ten, for instance, purely because that would occur to me first. But if someone else said Two Thousand And Ten or Two Thousand Ten, I don't think I'd blink.
(But I've now been thinking about this for two hours, so I'm uncertain of what I would have done before that, or what I will do given a few days to forget about it.)
If it's a list, why is the "and" only ever applied if there are tens/ones present? Why is the number 154,200 not expressed as "one hundred fifty-four thousand and two hundred?" And why do people use "and" between the hundred thousands and the ten thousands and thousands? To wit, why do people express the previous number as "one hundred AND fifty-four thousand, two hundred." If there's supposed to be a rationale behind the usage of "and," then it doesn't seem to be applied consistently at all.
marrog is right: this is about custom, not about meaning. In fact, I'll just quote what I wrote in another discussion on this topic:
"And all of this is entirely aside from the fact that this is fundamentally a language issue and language doesn't always make as much sense as people want it to. Language isn't math, people, even when you're saying numbers. It has rules, but those rules aren't always logical or consistent. It's custom to use the 'and' or not when expressing numbers. It presence or absence does not fundamentally change the meaning of the expression unless one party is so utterly unfamiliar with one usage that it confuses them (or is being deliberately obtuse to score points on the internet)."
Aluminium was originally named aluminum to be etymologically consistent with the oxide alumina (lanthana is the oxide of lanthanum, magnesia is the oxide of magnesium). Some dude changed it because he thought Aluminium 'sounded better'. Not really much of an excuse for going against the established and sensible convention. Aluminium, both historically and etymologically, ought to be called aluminum. Just like if rugby is rugby, football ought to be called soccer. Americans aren't always wrong just because they're American. Only different.
And the same goes for two thousand eleven. It's a different convention from the one we use and might initially seem ungrammatical, but the grammar is completely arbitrary to start with - we do lots of things in the English language that don't actually make grammatical sense - for example the use of pleonastic 'it' which lots of language don't have at all, same as any other language (hello grammatical gender).
By our rules 'two thousand eleven' seems wrong. But then, in 1800 double negatives were only ungrammatical in the South East of England. Stuff changes. We don't always like it (I usually don't), but there ain't nothing we can do about it.
Aluminium started off being called "alumium" (thus keeping the -ium suffix). The 'n' was later added (giving -um), and finally the 'u' (returning it to -ium). However, while 'aluminium' was the official spelling for some time in America, some guy who was selling it referred to it as "aluminum" on his flyers (possibly a typo), and the name stuck in America, but not here.
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But it just is! :p
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Second, 'thirty-four' works that way because the 'thirty' is a single word. If we said 'three tens' it would have to be 'three tens and four'. Hence why it has to be 'two hundred and ...'. There seems to me to be a logic there based on how the words work.
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I agree with you on X hundreds and blah - it's clearly a list.
"Three thousands, four hundreds, and fifty-six ones" - only slightly cut down.
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I'd be likely to say Twenty-Ten, for instance, purely because that would occur to me first. But if someone else said Two Thousand And Ten or Two Thousand Ten, I don't think I'd blink.
(But I've now been thinking about this for two hours, so I'm uncertain of what I would have done before that, or what I will do given a few days to forget about it.)
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"And all of this is entirely aside from the fact that this is fundamentally a language issue and language doesn't always make as much sense as people want it to. Language isn't math, people, even when you're saying numbers. It has rules, but those rules aren't always logical or consistent. It's custom to use the 'and' or not when expressing numbers. It presence or absence does not fundamentally change the meaning of the expression unless one party is so utterly unfamiliar with one usage that it confuses them (or is being deliberately obtuse to score points on the internet)."
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Aluminium was originally named aluminum to be etymologically consistent with the oxide alumina (lanthana is the oxide of lanthanum, magnesia is the oxide of magnesium). Some dude changed it because he thought Aluminium 'sounded better'. Not really much of an excuse for going against the established and sensible convention. Aluminium, both historically and etymologically, ought to be called aluminum. Just like if rugby is rugby, football ought to be called soccer. Americans aren't always wrong just because they're American. Only different.
And the same goes for two thousand eleven. It's a different convention from the one we use and might initially seem ungrammatical, but the grammar is completely arbitrary to start with - we do lots of things in the English language that don't actually make grammatical sense - for example the use of pleonastic 'it' which lots of language don't have at all, same as any other language (hello grammatical gender).
By our rules 'two thousand eleven' seems wrong. But then, in 1800 double negatives were only ungrammatical in the South East of England. Stuff changes. We don't always like it (I usually don't), but there ain't nothing we can do about it.
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Not sure if I'd rather have this embroidered on a pillow or tattooed on my arm....
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