I have some friends who strongly assert only the "jif" pronunciation is correct and the "gif" pronunciation is incorrect due to the stated intention of the creator of the format. I can't wait to experience their transition from PNG to "ping" when they learn they've been "mispronouncing" it all along. I wonder if I can convince them to use aluminium?
Wait, but an argument from original intent on aluminum/aluminium would go towards using aluminum [0]. That was the original published name, and the change to "-ium" only happened shortly after. We could go even further on that route and argue that the entire pattern of ending metals in "-ium" rather than "-um" is a neologism based on a misunderstanding. Of the classical metals [1] such as gold (aurum), silver (argentum), lead (plumbum), none of them end in "-ium". So where does that come from?
The best explanation I've heard is that it comes from the timeline of when different metals were discovered [2], back in the 1700s. Magnesium was discovered, and was named after Magnesia, a region in Greece. Basically, "magnesi-" + "-um". Then Barium was discovered, and was named from the Greek "baryta", meaning "heavy". Molybdenum followed the "-um" trend, and "tungsten"/"wolfram" ignored the discussion altogether.
And now we get to the first mistake. Tellurium was named from the Greek "tellus", and should have been called "tellurum". Instead, by analogy from magnesium and barium, the suffix "-ium" was added instead. Strontium came next, after the town of Strontian. This reinforced the trend of the "-ium" suffix, even though it came from "stronti-" + "-um". By the time Zirconium was discovered from the mineral "zircon", the association was cemented. So many metals had ended with "-ium" by sheer coincidence, that people assumed that that was the correct Latin suffix.
Bringing it back to the "aluminum" vs "aluminium", this means that there's neither authorial intent nor historical consistency in the use of "aluminium". I'm fine if people think it sounds better, and argue from that, but for the love of all that is holy, people need to quit pretended that it has any more validity or correctness to it.
I don't think it has more authority or correctness. That's part of the joke. I've actually read various incarnations of this argument on the internet (mostly carried out on Reddit), and at this point I consider it to be somewhat of a meme. What I remember from all of the times I've seen it brought up is that some international standards committee declared and it to be "aluminium" and so some internet denizens (especially Europeans who already tend to pronounce it that way) proudly declare this to be the authoritative be-all-end-all resolution to the subject, whereas the other side (typically those speaking American English) remind everyone that the person who made the original discovery considers "aluminum" to be correct.
Why I am grouping "gif", "png", and "alumin[i]um" together here is that people consider some nebulous authority to be the prescriber of all things pronunciation. I personally think that pronunciation is derived from how it is commonly spoken, and not the other way around. Hence its inclusion in my playful ribbing. If I appeal to the correct authority, can I make them change their pronunciation? Maybe it wasn't very funny.
Ah, got it. I thought that the joke was that you were tricking them into using a less favorable pronunciation on the basis of some perceived authority, rather than the joke being that there would be such an authority at all.
Other than friendly banter over a beer I've never given af how someone pronounced as long as they used one of the commonly "accepted" versions. Also never heard -anyone- call png "ping"
