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This seems dumb but harmless unless they're also saying "maths". Then it's a sign of the apocalypse.
by okonomiyaki3000 3y ago
This seems dumb but harmless unless they're also saying "maths". Then it's a sign of the apocalypse.
- sfpotter 3y agoAs a mathsematician, I have no problem with this.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoThat's the only correct way of contracting "mathematics". "Math" is surely a contraction of "mathematic" which is nonsensical. Also, do people in the U.S. study physic?
- ergvgdvgrd 3y agoFor your next act, defend the British pronounciation of "Worcestershire".
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoI don't think I can. The pronunciation of "Gloucester" (gloster) and "Leicester" (lester) follow a similar scheme for the "-cester" bit which leads to "Worcester" being pronounced "wooster", but Worcestershire sauce is often pronounced "wooster sauce" which doesn't make much sense. Apparently, Frome in Somerset is one of the hardest place names to pronounce in England, though it certainly doesn't compare to some Welsh towns. (I say it as "froom")
- wink 3y agoI mean, Sir Terry was British after all. cf https://wiki.lspace.org/Jonathan_Teatime https://wiki.lspace.org/Jonathan_Teatime
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoIt amuses me when english words are pronounced differently to make them seem posher. We have a nearby town called Yate (rhymes with gate), but the posh version rhymes with latte.
- wingspar 3y ago“It’s pronounced Bouquet” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances
- dghf 3y ago"It's spelled 'Raymond Luxury-Yacht', but it's pronounced 'Throat-Wobbler Mangrove'." https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7uv0n8 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7uv0n8
- Symbiote 3y agoI think the sauce is either Worcestershire Sauce, or Worcester Sauce, either is acceptable. Worcestershire and Worcester follow the same patter as Gloucestershire/Gloucester, Leicestershire/Leicester and (Towcestershire doesn't exist)/Towcester. Towcester, incidentally, being the same pronunciation as "toaster". The one that annoys me is Cirencester, which is usually "sai-ren-ses-ta", and only occasionally "sai-ren-ster".
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoJust found a Devon town called Woolfardisworthy, but can be pronounced as "Woolzery"
- notahacker 3y agoI like the Northamptonshire village of Cogenhoe, which is obviously pronounced cook-no. It sits on the River Nene, which is pronounced Neen or Nen depending on which bit of Northamptonshire you live in (Northamptonshire is not very big...)
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoI think the accepted authority on anything to do with Northamptonshire has to be Alan Moore.
- dghf 3y ago> The one that annoys me is Cirencester, which is usually "sai-ren-ses-ta", and only occasionally "sai-ren-ster". Or, according to my grandmother, "siss-iss-ter".
- Doctor_Fegg 3y agoLocals just call it “Ciren”…
- vmilner 3y agoIt took me a surprising amount of time to work out where (Ciren) they were talking about after moving to glow-sester-shire...
- denton-scratch 3y ago> "wooster sauce" "That's just incorrect. It's pronounced "wooster-shuh". The double-O is short, as in "book". Worcestershire Sauce is sometimes simply called "woosters", as in "a dash of woosters". > Frome in Somerset is one of the hardest place names to pronounce Hardly. It's pronounced "froom". That's not so hard.
- bee_rider 3y agoThere’s a town in Massachusetts called Worcester, pronounced something like Wooster/Woostah/Woostuh.
- nobody9999 3y ago>There’s a town in Massachusetts called Worcester, pronounced something like Wooster/Woostah/Woostuh. And there's a Gloucester[0] (pronounced 'Gloster' or, more likely in MA 'Glostah') there as well. And there's one[1] in Virgnia too, (Wikipedia says it's pronounced 'Gloster', but I don't know the VA accent well enough to know if that's locally correct). There are other similar place names around the US, mostly on the eastern seaboard, for obvious reasons, as well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester,_Massachusetts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester,_Massachusetts [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester_County,_Virginia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester_County,_Virginia
- chriswarbo 3y ago> The double-O is short, as in "book" Bad example, since some accents pronounce "book" like "kook" (not like "suck") ;)
- denton-scratch 3y agoFair do's; scousers indeed pronounce "book" as "bewk".
- mnw21cam 3y agoOne of my ambitions in life is to make a pronunciation guide using example words that are pronounced differently by different people.
- thr-nrg 3y agoYou start with a pinch of dyslexia and end with a bit of a lisp. Pretty straight forward when you imagine what it would sound like in a game of telephone between 10 5 year olds.
- happymellon 3y agoIt's due to being invaded by many different counties over the years, and each of them only invade a portion. Map men explain it best. https://youtu.be/uYNzqgU7na4 https://youtu.be/uYNzqgU7na4
- klyrs 3y agoWhy is "Jack" short for Johnathan?
- dagw 3y agoJonathan -> John/Jan -> Jankin (adding -kin as a diminutive) -> Jack That is at least the theory I've heard
- nobody9999 3y agoLikewise, Why is 'Peggy' short for Margaret?
- pjc50 3y agoThe pronunciation is what it is. The orthography is the problem. (Many words place names long pre-date any kind of attempt to regularize English spelling, and in any case come from fusions of Brythonic, Norman, Roman, Norwegian etc languages. This is why it's difficult to predict the pronunciation of one word from the spelling of another.)
- ergvgdvgrd 3y ago100% my point. Drawing a line at the purity of "maths" over "math" is the beginning of a rock fight in a village of glass houses.
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoMaybe, but 'we can't provide logical rules for names acquired over a millennium ago' seems like a poor reason to say 'therefore we shouldn't apply consistent rules to recent conventions'. Someone asked about physic ... well people used to use physick in [late medieval?] British English... but that's for what we might call medicine now.
- pessimizer 3y agoBefore the Normans, "shire" in Britain was written in Roman letters as "scr".
- BerislavLopac 3y agoOh, defending the pronounciation is easy, because the problem is not with the pronounciation at all -- it's all about English language spelling not keeping pace with the changes with the pronounciation.
- karmakaze 3y agoThe s is a noun marker. In short form it's extraneous. When you say "maths", how many do you mean? If you mean all collectively that would be singular, e.g. Mathematics is the study of ...
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago> When you say "maths", how many do you mean? All of them.
- code_runner 3y agoI mean this in the most genuinely curious and interested way possible.... but if you're doing geometry or trig... do you refer to it as "math" because you're just doing one type of mathematics? Is there every a point where it isn't plural. Is even 2+2=4 referred to as "maths". I think its funny that terms like math v maths come about very organically and then after the fact everyone feels the need to back into a reasoning that was likely never there. Obviously neither are wrong because they are the "correct" way for a given dialect/region etc.
- denton-scratch 3y ago> Is even 2+2=4 referred to as "maths" No, that's arithmetic (which is always singular, amusingly).
- code_runner 3y agoisn't arithmetic a branch of mathematics? i guess a mathematic?
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoHere in the UK, it's just called maths or mathematics and the term "math" is never used (or at least I can't think of an example). I find it generally amusing to examine the differences between U.S. and British English and quite often get confused over whether I should be using "licence" or "license". It's the little quirks of language/spelling that make it interesting. (Though english, I'm a big fan of some of the U.S. contractions such as "y'all'd've")
- a_shovel 3y agoHow much is one math, anyways? Is it an equation, or a plus or minus sign, or a number, or what? For that matter, how much math is five maths?
- yamtaddle 3y agoLooks like we'll need some math to sort out all these maths!
- electroly 3y agoAs an American who doesn't say "maths", my assumption is that algebra is one math, geometry is another, calculus is one, discrete math is one, etc. Together, they are "the maths." Probably a "just so" definition to satisfy my American ears. I bet they'd say that any one of those is still "maths" by itself.
- pak9rabid 3y agoTrue, but it always comes off as sounding a bit pretentious to me since the social norm (as far back as I can remember) has been to simply refer to it as "math".
- LgLasagnaModel 3y agoI don't think either one is a contraction.
- cardinalfang 3y agoStatistics -> stats, calculus -> calc, logic -> null
- Null-Set 3y agoDo british students study chem or chemy? The american word math is an abbreviation of mathematics, why would it be a contraction?
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoYeah, sorry - I should have put abbreviation for the U.S. version.
- jameshart 3y agoAmericans are comfortable that ‘statistics’ abbreviates to ‘stats’ Brits are also comfortable that ‘economics’ abbreviates to ‘econ’. Let’s not pretend either of us has a rational basis for this argument.
- lamontcg 3y ago> That's the only correct way of contracting "mathematics" That's the correct way of doing it if you've naturally got a British accent (or really any accent where you clearly learned British English as a second language). Americans saying 'maths' is like dragging fingernails down a chalkboard.
- yamazakiwi 3y agoSaying maths, or my favorites monies, sounds juvenile to most Americans in spite of their literary accuracy.
- RandallBrown 3y agoIf it's a contraction and not just a shortening, why isn't it math's?
- dev_tty01 3y agoNo, we are just unhappy with putting the "s" sound after the "th" sound. For some reason it just feels wrong.
- marcus_holmes 3y agoAmericans never seem to understand that there is more than one mathematics ;)
- jonhohle 3y agoFish is the plural of fish. Sheep is the plural of sheep. Trousers is the plural of trousers. And math is the plural of math.
- thr-nrg 3y agoFish is not the contraction of fishematics though.
- denton-scratch 3y agoAnd yet we have a "trouser press". Nobody refers to a "trousers press". Also "trouser suit". I love the irregularity of English.
- OJFord 3y agoI have to object to trousers - that's because it's already plural - 'a pair of trousers'; we just don't use the singular much, but trouser leg, trouser press.
- jjgreen 3y agoIndeed, and in the fashion world: "This year, kippers will be worn outside the trouser"
- happymellon 3y agoLuckily, there is no such thing as a fish.
- marcus_holmes 3y agoFish is the plural of fish only if all the fish are of the same species. If it's a mixed group of fish then the plural is fishes [0]. Same with maths - if you only have one type of mathematics then math would make sense. But there are many types of mathematics, so we call it maths. [0] https://www.grammarly.com/blog/fish-fishes/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/fish-fishes/
- hackeraccount 3y agoThose kids as a adults will be the ones talking about a "drugs" policy. What's up with that anyhow?
- LinuxBender 3y agoAre the young people watching old episodes of "Look Around You"? [1] [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J9MRYJz9-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J9MRYJz9-4 [video][1 min]
- shadowgovt 3y agoThe Helvetica Scenario is another sign of the apocalypse.
- jonhohle 3y agoOr worse: aluminium!
- Tokkemon 3y agoOr worse, Aluminium.
- boris 3y agoTitanum.
- metal_am 3y agoPlatinum
- pjc50 3y agoYou've just dredged up a memory of an educational video we watched at school years ago for Corel-Draw, which was rendered in the most Canadian accent any of us had ever heard. A friend jammed all the drawls into a single catchphrase which he used for laughs for weeks. "The daaataaa on the staaatus baaar is made of an aluuuuminum cahhhhmpaaaund and stahred on a cd-raaaaaaahm"
- lamontcg 3y agoDisorientated
- LordAtlas 3y agoBurglarized