# Early 20th century use of "minus" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 5, 2015, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977 "2015-09-05T02:31:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977/21 "2015-09-06T22:46:00Z")
Is it possible that [Polish notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation) was entering into things somehow? BTW, for years I though the term ‘Polish notation’ was a derogatory term, as in a Polish joke… ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977/22 "2015-09-06T22:51:48Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > On a tangential topic, as a child I was very amused when I realized my Indian relatives used “into” for multiplication instead of division. Another weird one, to American ears, is using “upon” instead of “over” for fractions. 5/8 is “5 upon 8”. Seems to come up whenever I interview Indian candidates. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2015, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977/23 "2015-09-06T23:27:42Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > Is it possible that [Polish notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation) was entering into things somehow? BTW, for years I though the term ‘Polish notation’ was a derogatory term, as in a Polish joke… See posts 8 and 16. (He meant RPN, of course, not RPM – Reverse Polish Notation.) There’s an unintentional Polish joke in there somewhere, if you dig deep enough. Spoilered because, y’know, maybe offensive to the Polish? (Where’s the VB code for [rot13] . . . [/rot13] like we used to do in the Usenet days?) [spoiler][Polish notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation) was so-named after its inventor, [Jan Łukasiewicz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_%C5%81ukasiewicz). His notation involved putting the operator first, followed by the two operands, e.g., + 3 4 instead of 3 + 4. This notation turned out to be massively useful in Computer Science, except that it turned out most useful to put the operator afterward, thus giving us Reverse Polish Notation, or RPN: 3 4 + RPN is so standard in CS today that it should be called Polish Notation. Mr. JŁ, in inventing his Polish notation, got it backward. We should be calling _his original notation_ “Reverse Polish Notation”. That’s the irony there. That’s why there’s a Polish Joke buried in all of this.[/spoiler] ETA: And why do we name innovations after the country the innovator came from instead of just, y’know, naming after the innovator? Is it because nobody knew how to pronounce his name? Same with [Hungarian Notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation), named after [Charles Simonyi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Simonyi). ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977/24 "2015-09-07T12:12:17Z")
Either your father was wrong, or you’re misremembering. > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > On an RPM calculator you would do 8 minus 10 plus, but that is because of the R (operators follow arguments). I never bother to calculate RPM, I just look at the tachometer. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977/25 "2015-09-07T12:19:43Z")
BTW, my parents, born in the mid 20’s, would generally use “minus”. My mother’s father, a doctor who’d taught elementary math plus GI bill to fund his education, used “from”. If they’re typical, then usage changed in the first couple decades of the 20th. My grandfather wasn’t typical in many ways though, so who knows. ---
**Author:** ![Redhawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4491bb/32.png) [@Redhawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Redhawk)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977/26 "2015-09-07T12:31:47Z")
Well i have the answer, 8-10=2 simple :)🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977/27 "2015-09-07T17:54:42Z")
You said he is “from a Mediterranean country.” Was he taught in another language (maybe even in New York)? Besides confusing “from” or “less” and “minus” in English, maybe he is thinking in a language that uses (or used, when he was growing up) a cognate of “minus” the way we use “from.” ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977/28 "2015-09-07T18:46:11Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > You said he is “from a Mediterranean country.” Was he taught in another language (maybe even in New York)? Besides confusing “from” or “less” and “minus” in English, maybe he is thinking in a language that uses (or used, when he was growing up) a cognate of “minus” the way we use “from.” It wouldn’t even have to be a cognate. People who speak multiple languages , even very fluently , sometimes have context-limited vocabularies. My husband speaks Cantonese fluently and without an accent, as he learned it simultaneously with English as a child. But his schooling was entirely in English and his Cantonese vocabulary was limited to what was useful in everyday life- no specialized vocabulary for contexts that he didn’t normally discuss in Cantonese. And “minus” is really part of a specialized vocabulary. I mean, I don’t know about anyone else, but when I’m subtracting in daily life I don’t normally use the word minus. It’s “I started the day with two hundred dollars and spent $57.50 so I should have $142.50 left” or “My share of the bill for the party is $2500 , but I paid $800 to the DJ so here’s $1700.” When I write it down, it’s 200-57.50, but the word “minus” isn’t used when I’m thinking (even aloud) about it. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977/29 "2015-09-07T19:27:50Z")
> [@LiliesOfTheField](#): > > When I was very young, my father (born in 1920) quizzed me once on my mental addition and subtraction talents. > > He was satisfied with my addition. > > But my subtraction enraged him. > > He asked me (for example) “What is 8 minus 10?” > > I hadn’t learned negative numbers yet, so I said “You can’t do that!” > > After a little back-and-forth I discovered that what he called 8 minus 10 was equivalent to what I called 10 minus 8. > > \ > > What was going on there? Was subtraction basically different back in the day? > > Would the above problem be written 10-8 but read aloud “8 minus 10”? > > Or was it also written 8-10? > > \ > > Could this be related to his coming from a Mediterranean country, or New York schools? I don’t think he ended up graduated from high school, but he was quite brilliant so he must have learned this somewhere. Is it a regionalism? My grandmother (born in 1912) went to school in New York City. She never approached subtraction as described above, as far as I know. [ul] [li]“Eight minus 10” would be negative two[/li][li]“10 minus 8” would be two.[/li][/ul] I think your father might have misremembered or reversed things. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2015, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977/30 "2015-09-07T20:08:50Z")
There’s one other possibility that hasn’t been mentioned. Is your real name Calvin? Maybe your dad was messing with your head. ---
**Author:** ![LiliesOfTheField](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c0e974/32.png) [@LiliesOfTheField](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LiliesOfTheField)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2015, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977/31 "2015-09-08T02:24:10Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > You said he is “from a Mediterranean country.” Was he taught in another language (maybe even in New York)? Besides confusing “from” or “less” and “minus” in English, maybe he is thinking in a language that uses (or used, when he was growing up) a cognate of “minus” the way we use “from.” That might be possible too. He emigrated when he was quite young. All of his schooling was in New York in the English language. His parents knew some English but I suspect that he mostly spoke his other language at home. When I knew him, he spoke English like a native (except when he was pandering.) So he would have been educated in English, in the style of the times. But it’s possible that he confused “less” with “minus” due to some mental translation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/early-20th-century-use-of-minus/729977.md?page=1)