Ok, but the British also shortened television and made it tele. That makes sense because they took part of the word to do it. If you were going to shorten the word mathematics, why wouldn’t it be math, especially when that would follow what you did with television. Why shorten the word and then add the s from the end for no reason?
why wouldn’t it be math, especially when that would follow what you did with television
Because television is singular (a TV set) and Maths is plural, same as Bros. is the abbreviation of brothers. i.e. when abbreviating a plural you keep the “s”.
Television isn’t a plural word tho? And if they were talking about more than one television I feel like they would absolutely say teles (tellies?), altho not British so 🤷♂️
And the other error present is the incorrect pluralisation. Mathematica means the entire area or domain of knowledge, while mathematics sounds like several lines of thinking, which is weird when we use it as a singular. Maths doesn’t refer to several kinds of math, and that’s confusing.
The original Greek “-ikos” was both the feminine singular when refering to “the art” (the whole field), and the neuter plural when refering to “things pertaining to the art”. Latin took just the feminine singular, and most Latin-based languages today still use a singular, including English terms older than 1500 or so, like chemistry rather than chemics, taxonomy v. taxonomics, or arithmetic as opposed to arithmetics‽
Later in the Renaissance, people remembered Greek existed, and decided to try and bring back the neuter plural by taking a perfectly good -ic and slapping an s on it. Thus we get the somewhat newer sciences of physics, mathematics, ballistics, demographics, statistics, and so on.
The shortening of mathematics to “math” and “maths” was done much later, around 1900, give or take a few decades. Both versions can be found as purely written contractions beforehand, but their use in speech and whether the s was thruncated appears random.
Thus, if you must use a plural, the original useage has singular for the field (“Biomechanics is a difficult subject.”), and plural for things relating to the field (“The mathematics used are difficult to parse.”); don’t try to justify using several thousand year old grammar (from a region remote enough that we forgot about it for several centuries) with syntax rules not present in the original. English is plenty fucked up as it is, let it build it’s own syntax and heal a bit, eh?
I don’t understand why people say Maths. Math encompasses every single type of Math. Maths is just wrong.
Because it’s plural.
In other words, every branch of Mathematics.
What is math short for?
It’s a shortened form of mathematics, build a bridge and get over it
Ok, but the British also shortened television and made it tele. That makes sense because they took part of the word to do it. If you were going to shorten the word mathematics, why wouldn’t it be math, especially when that would follow what you did with television. Why shorten the word and then add the s from the end for no reason?
Because television is singular (a TV set) and Maths is plural, same as Bros. is the abbreviation of brothers. i.e. when abbreviating a plural you keep the “s”.
Television isn’t a plural word tho? And if they were talking about more than one television I feel like they would absolutely say teles (tellies?), altho not British so 🤷♂️
Because it’s British English
That may be, but Math still encompasses all Math so there’s no need to pluralize it.
Mathematics.
The discipline is “mathematics.” It’s really not unreasonable that in some parts of the world, it got shortened to maths.
And the other error present is the incorrect pluralisation. Mathematica means the entire area or domain of knowledge, while mathematics sounds like several lines of thinking, which is weird when we use it as a singular. Maths doesn’t refer to several kinds of math, and that’s confusing.
It refers to all branches of Mathematics.
That’s an after the fact justification.
You got some sources with dates in them to show it was “after”, and not, you know, before?
The original Greek “-ikos” was both the feminine singular when refering to “the art” (the whole field), and the neuter plural when refering to “things pertaining to the art”. Latin took just the feminine singular, and most Latin-based languages today still use a singular, including English terms older than 1500 or so, like chemistry rather than chemics, taxonomy v. taxonomics, or arithmetic as opposed to arithmetics‽
Later in the Renaissance, people remembered Greek existed, and decided to try and bring back the neuter plural by taking a perfectly good -ic and slapping an s on it. Thus we get the somewhat newer sciences of physics, mathematics, ballistics, demographics, statistics, and so on.
The shortening of mathematics to “math” and “maths” was done much later, around 1900, give or take a few decades. Both versions can be found as purely written contractions beforehand, but their use in speech and whether the s was thruncated appears random.
Thus, if you must use a plural, the original useage has singular for the field (“Biomechanics is a difficult subject.”), and plural for things relating to the field (“The mathematics used are difficult to parse.”); don’t try to justify using several thousand year old grammar (from a region remote enough that we forgot about it for several centuries) with syntax rules not present in the original. English is plenty fucked up as it is, let it build it’s own syntax and heal a bit, eh?
And British English is wrong. Those motherfuckers stick “u” into way too many words.
Anymore of this disrespect and I’ll stick “u” into an early grave.
/jk
I feel obligated to say English that comes from England is the only real English. You can keep your Americanese.
I’ll have you find that there’s more Americans and statistically likely to have more “motherfuckers” in america