I thought the following would be something like the hated “why do we drive on a parkway, and park on a driveway” question, but since I searched and couldn’t find a thread, here goes.
Why do Brits play sport and study maths, while Americans play sports and study math?
I was aware of the latter British usage, but not the former. I really don’t see you you expect a precise answer to this. It’s just teh way the langauge developed. As for the sports issue, I’d say it’s generally used to indicate more than one sport. That is, “I play sports” indicates I participate in tennis and baseball. If there were only one, I’d say, “I play golf.” giving the specific sport.
Sport as the collective noun for the topic of sport rather than the sports themselves is analagous to opera vs. operas, cinema vs. cinemas etc. Are those examples not American usage either?
As for maths, it depends on whether you consider mathematics to be plural. It’s one of those pseudo-plural words formed by adding an S to an adjective, like electrics or civics (mathematic being an adjective according to my dictionary, albeit not one I’ve heard anyone use).
Think back to my school timetable. Yes it read something like Monday 10 - 11 Maths and Wednesday 2 - 3 Sport.
In this instance Sport is sport and not sports because when we did PE we only did one sport at a time. (Football or Rugby or Cricket) If for some strange reason we played all three at once or played all two or more in the hour we had I reckon we would have called it “sports”.
Maths is just maths as short for mathamatics, you say “I have stats next period” and not stat for statistics, right ?
Huh, we always called it ‘sports’.
Which dictionary? It’s not in Cambridge or Chambers (mathematical being the adjective listed), and only given as a variant in Merriam-Webster.
American Heritage 2000, via dictionary.com.
Yeah, in America “statistics” is commonly shortened to “stats,” but “economics” is shortened to “econ.” Maybe that’s because “statistics” can be plural, but you can’t have more than one economic; or maybe it’s just futile to hope for consistency. As an American, I definitely don’t think of mathematics as plural. Plus, “maths” is harder to say than “math”; it makes my mouth hurt just looking at it.
As for why American sports fans read the sports page and watch sports on TV (I suppose Brits would watch sport on the telly), we think of “sports” as a collective noun, encompassing all the various sports: baseball, tennis, football, hockey, etc. I get the impression that, to the Brits, “sport” is a word analogous to “literature” or “art” or “business” (or as Usram mentioned, “opera” or “cinema,” though Americans don’t use the word “cinema” as much; we’re likely to talk about “the movies”).
I think it’s fascinating watching British and American English gradually diverge like this, especially with something like this, where both ways make equal sense, but one side goes one way and the other goes another.
I have been wondering for about a year now when the hell ‘math’ became plural! Apparently when I started reading things written in English english. I thought there was some kind of conspiracy I was not aware of.