I was going to comment on that–it’s certainly not a UK English thing. Most Americans I know–unless they grew up playing D&D or dice-based role-playing games–use “dice” for the singular.
–Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary
WTF dude.
You know we jest frequently about the common language that divides us.
Hearing “maths” in the U.S. has become more prevalent with more Indian immigrants, whose English dialect is much more heavily influenced by England than by the U.S.
Moderator Note
friedo, while evidently meant in jest this is both insulting and verging on trolling. Let’s keep remarks like this out of GQ. No warning issued.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Maybe worth adding that what kids do in primary school is not ‘maths’. That is arithmetic; maths does not kick in until algebra, trigonometry and geometry rear their heads.
This is news to me. As a subject, they call it maths or mathematics at the local primary school near me (and others in the vicinity). Arithmetic, algebra etc are topics/themes within the subject.
I’ve seen math and arithmetic used interchangebly at the elementary level around here, and it was that way when I was a kid. And apparently ‘arithmetic’ starts with an R, as does ‘writing’.
It was arithmetic when I was at (UK) primary school. Mind you, that was a long time ago.
I would say that for most students, high school geometry is the first actual math class they encounter. If you’re not doing proofs, then you’re not doing math.
Informally/conversationally, it’s sometimes still referred to as arithmetic in the context of ‘the three Rs’ (reading writing and ‘rithmetic’) but in every academic sense, it’s maths or mathematics. Arithmetic, although still a perfectly valid technical term, is archaic as a subject name.
I am not sure what you mean by “academic sense”. Perhaps when British primary school students learn to count, add, subtract, multiply, and divide, that is nowadays known as “maths” in the professional argot of primary school teachers and administrators, but (unless what is actually taught has changed a lot since my day, and has come to include much more advanced topics) it is still most accurately described as arithmetic, which, in the academic terms used in actual academia, is merely (at best) but one branch of maths (mathematics) amongst many. I say “at best” because, if Chronos, in the post above yours, is right (I am not saying I agree, but it is a defensible point of view), in strict, academic, terms arithmetic is not really mathematics at all.
Exactly that, yes.
Which is what I meant by ‘technical sense’.
In my experience (as a primary school governor) primary school teachers refer to the subject and teaching of mathematics as ‘mathematics’ or ‘maths’. They might talk about some detail as ‘arithmetic operations’ or similar - i.e. as a term of technical detail, much as a computer programmer might also term it.
Of course arithmetic is part of mathematics. So are algebra, geometry, analysis, logic (mathematical logic, that is) and even category theory. Also arithmetic isn’t just 1 + 1 = 2, but includes higher arithmetic, e.g. quadratic reciprocity and, ultimately, Fermat’s last theorem.
Maybe one day, “rice” will be considered a plural of “rie”. (You will find this joke somewhere in Stephen Pinker’s works but he stole it from my late colleague who taught Pinker his first mathematical linguistics course.
Finally, “Statistics is the study of statistics.”
‘Maths’ is, in fact, an acronym for ‘Mathematical Anti-Telharsic Harfatum Septonin’, of course.
Now write that down in your copybook.
Back to the original topic - why does the unabbreviated term end with an S anyway? Why aren’t we calling it Mathematic? (and Physic, Linguistic, Economic )?
Imhotep is invisible.
Mitt Romney was ridiculed for using the term “sport” where most American speakers would expect “sports”. (The quote was, “I figured he had to be in sport, but he wasn’t in sport”.) However Romney’s usage would be normal and acceptable to British English speakers.
The other way around from “math” and “maths”.
“Maths” is just the correct way of saying “math”.