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That'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. stud
by ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
That'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 4y agoFor your next act, defend the British pronounciation of "Worcestershire".
- ndsipa_pomu 4y 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 4y agoI mean, Sir Terry was British after all. cf https://wiki.lspace.org/Jonathan_Teatime https://wiki.lspace.org/Jonathan_Teatime
- ndsipa_pomu 4y 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 4y ago“It’s pronounced Bouquet” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances
- dghf 4y 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 4y 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 4y agoJust found a Devon town called Woolfardisworthy, but can be pronounced as "Woolzery"
- notahacker 4y 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 4y agoI think the accepted authority on anything to do with Northamptonshire has to be Alan Moore.
- dghf 4y 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 4y agoLocals just call it “Ciren”…
- vmilner 4y 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 4y 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 4y agoThere’s a town in Massachusetts called Worcester, pronounced something like Wooster/Woostah/Woostuh.
- nobody9999 4y 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 4y ago> The double-O is short, as in "book" Bad example, since some accents pronounce "book" like "kook" (not like "suck") ;)
- denton-scratch 4y agoFair do's; scousers indeed pronounce "book" as "bewk".
- mnw21cam 4y agoOne of my ambitions in life is to make a pronunciation guide using example words that are pronounced differently by different people.
- thr-nrg 4y 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 4y 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 4y agoWhy is "Jack" short for Johnathan?
- dagw 4y agoJonathan -> John/Jan -> Jankin (adding -kin as a diminutive) -> Jack That is at least the theory I've heard
- nobody9999 4y agoLikewise, Why is 'Peggy' short for Margaret?
- pjc50 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y agoBefore the Normans, "shire" in Britain was written in Roman letters as "scr".
- BerislavLopac 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago> When you say "maths", how many do you mean? All of them.
- code_runner 4y 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 4y ago> Is even 2+2=4 referred to as "maths" No, that's arithmetic (which is always singular, amusingly).
- code_runner 4y agoisn't arithmetic a branch of mathematics? i guess a mathematic?
- ndsipa_pomu 4y 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 4y 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 4y agoLooks like we'll need some math to sort out all these maths!
- electroly 4y 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 4y 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 4y agoI don't think either one is a contraction.
- cardinalfang 4y agoStatistics -> stats, calculus -> calc, logic -> null
- Null-Set 4y agoDo british students study chem or chemy? The american word math is an abbreviation of mathematics, why would it be a contraction?
- ndsipa_pomu 4y agoYeah, sorry - I should have put abbreviation for the U.S. version.
- jameshart 4y 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 4y 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 4y agoSaying maths, or my favorites monies, sounds juvenile to most Americans in spite of their literary accuracy.
- RandallBrown 4y agoIf it's a contraction and not just a shortening, why isn't it math's?
- dev_tty01 4y agoNo, we are just unhappy with putting the "s" sound after the "th" sound. For some reason it just feels wrong.