In the UK the short form of mathematics is "maths", while in the US it is "math". Can anyone explain the origin of the difference? Also what is used in Canada or Australia?

I'm not sure how the difference came to be. Actually I didn't even know there was a difference for that particular word between the UK and the US. Here in Canada we tend to use american and british pronunciation/spelling interchangeably. I don't really stick to one country's spelling for all words myself. I would write "grey" (UK) instead of "gray", but I also write "meter" (US) instead of "metre".

I usually hear "math" though.

Wiki says that "math" is strictly North American, and all other anglophones say "maths."

I can't find a discussion of the difference between the two slang terms. However I notice a pattern of difference between American and British usage in the treatment of certain nouns as singular versus plural, respectively. We say, "IBM has announced a new computer, the department is holding a Christmas party, my family was in church" whereas the Brits say, "IBM have..., the department are..., my family were..." We speak of the group as an entity unto itself while they think of it as the people who comprise it.

So, is "maths" a plural noun? Do British kids say, "maths are hard?" We say, "math is hard."

Americans want to be different. thats why we got lbs and feet...

well in Australia (and most of our terms come from english rather than US terminology) its maths IS EASY:p

Or to say it more the way kids do

mathsseasy:p (we tend to run our words together)

Americans want to be different. thats why we got lbs and feet...
lbs and feet came to America from Britain. In recent years Britain has decided to join most of the world in going metric. US has a very conservative government.

Wiki says that "math" is strictly North American, and all other anglophones say "maths."

I can't find a discussion of the difference between the two slang terms. However I notice a pattern of difference between American and British usage in the treatment of certain nouns as singular versus plural, respectively. We say, "IBM has announced a new computer, the department is holding a Christmas party, my family was in church" whereas the Brits say, "IBM have..., the department are..., my family were..." We speak of the group as an entity unto itself while they think of it as the people who comprise it.

So, is "maths" a plural noun? Do British kids say, "maths are hard?" We say, "math is hard."


British kids say "maths is hard."

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "math" here. It sounds silly.


I can't find a discussion of the difference between the two slang terms. However I notice a pattern of difference between American and British usage in the treatment of certain nouns as singular versus plural, respectively. We say, "IBM has announced a new computer, the department is holding a Christmas party, my family was in church" whereas the Brits say, "IBM have..., the department are..., my family were..." We speak of the group as an entity unto itself while they think of it as the people who comprise it.


Thats interesting.

lbs and feet came to America from Britain. In recent years Britain has decided to join most of the world in going metric. US has a very conservative government.

America itself came from Britain...:p

speaking of which i was chatting to a guy from texis ages ago on MSN. He asked me where i come from and i said Australia and his responce (can rember word for word because i was so shocked) was

Texis guy "where in America is that"
Me "umm its not its a country in the region of Oceana"
Texis guy "but how can you not be in america, you speak american"

At this point i banged my head on the keyboard for a while.

Use of contracted or abbreviated words like "math" or "maths" is a dynamic of spoken language. Speakers of any language tend to pronounce words in an "easier" form.

Most people understand that "mathematics" is the intended term. How many acronyms are used daily as words ("TV", "PC", "USB"), or abbreviations ("phone").

I usually say "I don't have the math", rather than say the whole word. It's just economy of style, I guess. This is happening all the time: words, as semantic objects, get their pronunciation changed by speakers, and eventually the spelling changes, too. Look at the UK/US differences between some common words like colour/color, behaviour/behavior...

speaking of which i was chatting to a guy from texis ages ago on MSN. He asked me where i come from and i said Australia and his responce (can rember word for word because i was so shocked) was

Texis guy "where in America is that"
Me "umm its not its a country in the region of Oceana"
Texis guy "but how can you not be in america, you speak american"

At this point i banged my head on the keyboard for a while.He was joking! Americans are the most geographically ignorant people on earth and Texans are not the brightest people in America (you all know the one I'm referring to) but even Texans have heard of Australia.

AC/DC, Steve Irwin, kangaroos. Probably in that order of familiarity. :) You guys even go surfing! Australia is famous for its surf, although probably not in Texas.

But most Americans don't know what "Oceania" means (especially if you spell it wrong, then we don't have a clue what you're talking about). We don't use the term very much. We tend to call them the Pacific Islands, even though technically that's just Polynesia.

But please, you have to learn to spell TEXAS. That will make you look even dumber than them. ;)

actually this was before steve erwin and i did ask if he was serious and he said yes. The bit i couldnt belive the most was the fact that he didnt seem to know he spoke ENGLISH!!!!!!!!! i can handle people who havent herd of Australia but not knowing what laugage your speaking goes a little to far

Oceania in this contects refers to the tectonic plate we sit on encompasing Australia, half of NZ and runing through indoneasia. However its also used in a political contexts to refer to south east asia, Australia and NZ

Were is this Australia again? And in what language did I just ask that question?

However I notice a pattern of difference between American and British usage in the treatment of certain nouns as singular versus plural, respectively. We say, "IBM has announced a new computer, the department is holding a Christmas party, my family was in church" whereas the Brits say, "IBM have..., the department are..., my family were..."

"my family were" sounds most strange to me.

As an Australian, I would say "IBM has..." and "My family was..."

Both "IBM" and "My family" are singular nouns. One refers to a single company and the other refers to a single group of people.

Probably, I'd do the same for "The department". It is a single group of people.

The only way you can say "IBM were..." or "The department were..." is to think of IBM or the department as many people rather than as a single entity comprised of people. Maybe that's what British people do.


We speak of the group as an entity unto itself while they think of it as the people who comprise it.

Ughh. That's what you said already. That'll teach me to read more carefully!


So, is "maths" a plural noun? Do British kids say, "maths are hard?" We say, "math is hard."

Aussies say "Maths is hard", as in "The study of the subject known as 'mathematics' is hard."

The bit i couldnt belive the most was the fact that he didnt seem to know he spoke ENGLISH!!!!!!!!! i can handle people who havent herd of Australia but not knowing what laugage your speaking goes a little to farSounds like he was a real dummy. People who spend time on the internet usually become a little more knowledgeable.
Oceania in this contects refers to the tectonic plate we sit on encompasing Australia, half of NZ and runing through indoneasia. However its also used in a political contexts to refer to south east asia, Australia and NZI had to look up a definition of "Oceania" and I'm just as confused as when I started.It does not include Malaysia. It does not properly include the Philippines but some people use it that way. It only includes the eastern part of Indonesia. It includes Australia. It stretches all the way to include Guam, Hawaii and Rapa Nui!It's a gigantic area, mostly water, that's defined partly by culture, partly by tradition, partly by politics, and, apparently, largely by accident!

I thought "Oceania" was supposed to be a bunch of islands out in the "ocean," not whole continents. I thought it was supposed to define a group of countries, not pieces of them. If it includes Guam, Rapa Nui and the Hawaiian Islands because Polynesians settled there, then why doesn't it also include Madagascar?

The reason your having so much trouble is your looking for a political view point for something that has its basis in geography for the main. If you look at a map of the techtonic plates you will see why those decisions have been made. THEN the geographic term was changed to take on a politial view point and therfor makes little sence as it can be changed to fit whoever your talking about. That plate is also called tha Australian TP or the Indo Australian TP

Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI)
How prevalent is this new approach to mathematics in the US, Australia and others?
As to the language i find it amusing how americans use the word an and the term off of :p

kazakhan the difference in the way "an" is used has to do with the difference in the pronunciation of "h". The US accent tends to drop the "h" and pronounce words like "HERB" as "ERB" so they say AN "erb" rather than "A" "herb"

How prevalent is this new approach to mathematics in the US, Australia and others?I am not familiar with these particular algorithms, but various incarnations of the "New Math" have been spreading through the American school system for about 35 years.

I can see two purposes for teaching the "Cluster Problem" method. One is to learn to deconstruct numbers, imparting a sense of "numeracy." Numeracy, in part, means the ability to judge the reasonableness of a solution. For example, if you walk up to the check-out counter in a store with eight boxes of cereal and they are priced at $4.49 each, you expect the total to be less than $50 because ten boxes of cereal at $5.00 each would cost $50.00. Another purpose for the Cluster Problem method is to teach a way of analyzing a problem that breaks it into a series of problems that can be done without pencil and paper. For example, what's 32*28? I digress here, but my own analysis is based on algebra. 32*28 is obviously (30+2)*(30-2), which = 30*2 - 2*2, which = 900 - 4, which = 896. It took me four steps to solve the problem, but all four steps were ones I could do in my head.

The problem with the cluster problem method, I believe, is that it relies on intuition that children have not yet developed. I know they're not teaching my algebra-based analysis, but even the one used in the example requires skill at numerical analysis that even we smart kids didn't develop until we were about ten or eleven years old.

The cluster problem method also seems to presume that the traditional columnar way of doing multiplication is too difficult to learn. I don't understand that. Are kids just stupider than we were? 55 years ago we had all mastered it by age eight and we were learning long division. Yeah, a percentage of the kids didn't learn it, but I don't know if it's because they couldn't or just because they didn't want to. In either case I don't believe that those particular kids would have paid attention to these new methods.

The second method, whatever it was called, was not presented with an explanation for why it works. That will frustrate a lot of kids.

I'd like to see either method in action with three-digit numbers! I didn't bother watching the whole thing. It looks like a classic example of putting adults in charge of education who have completely forgotten what it was like to be a child. That, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with America's schools. I know there's a trend toward not trusting the judgment of people who don't have children themselves. They don't understand that becoming a parent forces you to lose touch with the child inside you. Those of us who never had to do that may understand children much better than we're given credit for, because we never stopped being children.
As to the language i find it amusing how americans use. . . . the term off of.American dictionaries list the primary meaning of "off" as an adverb. The burglar ran off before we could catch him. My shoe fell off. Profits are falling off. Our dog chased the bear off.

So to use it as a preposition feels awkward. Brits like concision in their speech and so do we when we're speaking colloquially, but in formal speech we'll say, "Fido, get off OF the sofa." There are many other adverb/preposition ambiguities, including out, up, and down.
kazakhan the difference in the way "an" is used has to do with the difference in the pronunciation of "h". The US accent tends to drop the "h" and pronounce words like "HERB" as "ERB" so they say AN "erb" rather than "A" "herb"Are you saying Aussies pronounce the H in herb?

What puzzles me is "an historic moment." I've never heard any anglophone except a Cockney drop the H off of "history."

The cluster problem method also seems to presume that the traditional columnar way of doing multiplication is too difficult to learn. I don't understand that. Are kids just stupider than we were? 55 years ago we had all mastered it by age eight and we were learning long division. Yeah, a percentage of the kids didn't learn it, but I don't know if it's because they couldn't or just because they didn't want to. In either case I don't believe that those particular kids would have paid attention to these new methods.
Kids aren't getting stupider parents and society are making it easier for them to be lazy.

It looks like a classic example of putting adults in charge of education who have completely forgotten what it was like to be a child. That, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with America's schools. I know there's a trend toward not trusting the judgment of people who don't have children themselves. They don't understand that becoming a parent forces you to lose touch with the child inside you. Those of us who never had to do that may understand children much better than we're given credit for, because [i]we never stopped being children.
I agree that part of the cause at least is adults forgetting being children themselves but i haven't forgotten. I often find myself looking back to when i was that age in order to deal with issues my children are having. However my wife fails to relate the present to the past :shrug:

Are you saying Aussies pronounce the H in herb?
Indeed we do.

Use of contracted or abbreviated words like "math" or "maths" is a dynamic of spoken language. Speakers of any language tend to pronounce words in an "easier" form.

Most people understand that "mathematics" is the intended term. How many acronyms are used daily as words ("TV", "PC", "USB"), or abbreviations ("phone").

I usually say "I don't have the math", rather than say the whole word. It's just economy of style, I guess. This is happening all the time: words, as semantic objects, get their pronunciation changed by speakers, and eventually the spelling changes, too. Look at the UK/US differences between some common words like colour/color, behaviour/behavior...

The spelling differences (colour/color, theatre/theater, etc.) are a reflection of the attempt of Noah Webster (father of American dictionaries) to reform spelling.

Indeed we do.Do you say "a hour" and "a honorable gentleman" too??

Unfortuantly not, we do tend to say AN hour but we still prounouch the "h":p

It's 'coz letters get dropped, and words get "droopy".

I'd say: "the math is hard", but I wouldn't say "the maths are hard".

P.S. if someone, a kid say, said "maths is hard", I'd probably say "maths is easy" back at them.