• Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      This is medicine in a nutshell too. And not just abbreviations, but acronyms… for words in a language that no one uses. I hate it.

      • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 months ago

        I literally took Latin in college for the sole reason that Latin is used in super stupid ways, and my science communication degree would be worth less without that knowledge. Because Latin-base is fully half of the science terms you need to know.

        And my college was super on board with my reasoning. Wish I’d also had the mental capacity for ancient Greek, because that’s literally the other half of naming schemes.

        Ridiculous.

        I’m super into modern scientists giving shit pop culture names. Because holy shit is it ever more memorable than some random Latin/greek bullshit.

      • Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Well, what other language should be used? Latin is the language of science because there’s no way we’d ever agree on which alive language to use.

      • someguy3@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Apparently tungsten is also known as Wolfram, so that’s the W. Sodium Na is from neo-latin.

          • grandkaiser@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            It’s called Sodium in English because an English chemist Sir Humphrey Davy discovered it & named it “Sodium” He was able to isolate it via separation of caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) and therefore named it after the caustic soda “soda-ium”. A few years later, a German chemist (Ludwig Wilhelm Gilbert) was able to isolate it and named it “Natronium” Just under a decade later, Jöns Jacob Berzelius coined the term “Natrium” as he felt the name “Natronium” was too lengthy to catch on.

            As to exactly why the earlier term was not respected is likely due to nationalism. During the earlier 1800’s a lot of countries were desperately trying to take claim for various rapid advancements in chemistry, physics, mathematics, and medicine. Getting to have the name that “your guy” coined was largely bent around national pride.