General > General Technical Chat

Why no Farad or Henry meter?

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RoGeorge:
Indeed.

TimFox:
Much of the spelling/pronunciation problems in English result from the collision of Romance languages (especially French) with the Germanic languages in the development of the language since 1066 (Norman conquest).
The Roman alphabet is a reasonably efficient coding of Latin pronunciation, but it gets less efficient as the language to be spelled gets more distant from Latin, including Germanic and Slavic languages.
When a Swedish associate tried to help me with a railway timetable, he insisted on pronouncing the station names in correct Swedish, to which I cried out in anguish "Is this is the Roman alphabet we are using here?"

themadhippy:

--- Quote ---Much of the spelling/pronunciation problems in English result from
--- End quote ---
Other countrys bastardising it and claiming there version is the default standard.The clue is in the name "english" if an  other country wishes to drop the odd letter out of words or change the order of the letters around then fine,but dont claim its english,find your own name.

TimFox:

--- Quote from: themadhippy on December 02, 2023, 07:12:47 pm ---
--- Quote ---Much of the spelling/pronunciation problems in English result from
--- End quote ---
Other countrys bastardising it and claiming there version is the default standard.The clue is in the name "english" if an  other country wishes to drop the odd letter out of words or change the order of the letters around then fine,but dont claim its english,find your own name.

--- End quote ---

The problems to which I referred there are more prevalent in the UK than in US.
For example, the pronunciation of "lieutenant".
Specifically, the adoption of French words into the English language (long before 1776) often brought French spellings as baggage, despite native pronunciation of the words themselves.

The best reference for these questions, written, edited, and published by an authoritative UK source is "The Oxford Companion to the English Language", from Oxford University Press  (that's in England).
  https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199661282.001.0001/acref-9780199661282

Similarly, most Austrians speak German, as do many Swiss.
Some Canadians speak French.
Far more people in the Western Hemisphere speak Spanish than those in Spain.
Similarly, for Portuguese.
Live with it!

RoGeorge:
Intriguingly, in English it's 'metronome' (etymology Greek 'metron' - the measure, plus 'nomos' - regulating).
By the form 'meter', one would expect the spelling to be 'meternome', yet it is spelled 'metronome'.  :)

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