Comment on Firms are exploring sodium batteries as an alternative to lithium
Buffalox@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Most likely because the news is in English. And why would Natrium be better on an international forum?
It is Sodium in most Latin languages (despite Natrium being Latin), in Hindi and in Arabic. And Chinese has a different root. Among the 10 most spoken languages (according to Wikipedia), only Russian is using Natrium.
As a native English speaker, I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone call NaCl just “Sodium”, it’s always called Sodium Chloride.
I’m a PhD candidate in chemistry. I’ve never once seen sodium refer to the salt, sodium chloride. Sodium is the metallic form or the atom.
However, why sodium, tungsten, lead, antimony, tin, silver, gold, mercury, iron, and potassium and not their Latin forms? Natrium, wolfram, plumbum, stibium, stannum, argentum, aurum, hydrargyrum, Ferrum and kalium? I don’t really know. Mostly it’s just fun trivia for me to tell the undergrads.
I always said salt, of sodium chloride for NaCl. Who is using sodium for table salt? The only time I heard that associated was when saying that table salt is a source of sodium, which is true.
I’ve never heard natrium before. I guess I could learn. We could also call pineapples ananas.
Thalion@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Because we’re speaking English, not Latin?
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Quare loquimur anglicus?
RojoSanIchiban@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Romani ite dormum!
Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 10 months ago
What's that supossed to say?
RojoSanIchiban@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Well it would have said “Romani ite domum” if I didn’t typo that.
At least I didn’t write it as “Romanes eunt domus” like some weirdo.
(It’s a Monty Python reference)
db2@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Toccare!