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  • -Math.

  • DAVE BROWN: Maths-type stuff.

  • -Do the math for me.

  • -This is the story of maths.

  • VI HART: Say you're me in your math class.

  • -Science without maths.

  • DR. LYNNE MURPHY: Emotions run high how about

  • maths versus math.

  • If you're an American living in Britain, you will have been

  • corrected a lot and told things like, what's wrong with

  • you Americans?

  • Don't you realize that there's an S on the end of

  • mathematics, so you need an S on the end of math.

  • BRADY HARAN: You are an American living in Britain.

  • DR. LYNNE MURPHY: I am an American living in Britain.

  • BRADY HARAN: Tell me about how much problem this causes you.

  • DR. LYNNE MURPHY: Well, I mean, it's enough that I now

  • say maths, because I don't want to have an argument.

  • Well, it's only in the 19th century that people started

  • abbreviating mathematics.

  • And at that point, the first known use of

  • math is from 1847.

  • That's what the "Oxford English

  • Dictionary" has recorded.

  • There, you know, people are using it with a full stop-- or

  • a period, as we Americans say.

  • And there's not a lot of evidence there that people

  • were actually saying it.

  • It looks like it started out as an abbreviation in writing

  • and not an abbreviation in speech.

  • So that starts around 1847.

  • It's not until 1911 that we see maths with an S. And

  • again, it looks like people weren't

  • probably saying it then.

  • They were probably just writing it in course catalogs

  • and things like.

  • English people will say to me, there's an S on the end of

  • mathematics, so you need to put the S

  • on the end of maths--

  • which I counter, but we don't put the last letter from other

  • abbreviations onto the end of those abbreviations.

  • So when you say fax instead of facsimile, you don't say

  • facsie, just because there's an E on the end of fax.

  • So that argument that you should put the last letter

  • onto an abbreviation, I don't quite understand.

  • Except that a lot of people say this because they believe

  • that mathematics is plural.

  • And so you have to use the S to mark the plural in

  • mathematics on maths.

  • The problem with that is that mathematics isn't plural.

  • You don't say there are two mathematics that I

  • need to look at.

  • And when you make maths or mathematics agree with a verb,

  • you make it agree with a singular verb,

  • not a plural one.

  • So you don't say mathematics are interesting.

  • You say maths is interesting.

  • So there's plenty of linguistic evidence that

  • that's a singular.

  • But people see the S and think, if there's an S on the

  • end of a noun, it must be plural.

  • BRADY HARAN: Does that mean Americans have this deeper

  • understanding of what constitutes plural?

  • DR. LYNNE MURPHY: No, I don't think so.

  • I think it's that-- and I don't think, necessarily, that

  • British people put the S on the end because they did think

  • it was plural.

  • It was the habit that was got into, probably because it was

  • first a written form.

  • And in written forms, you might abbreviate things all

  • sorts of ways.

  • But once they saw the S, they interpreted it as plural.

  • So this is what we call a folk etymology.

  • You see something with a form that looks familiar, and you

  • assume it has that form for a reason.

  • And so people are always looking for reasons why their

  • form of the languages is more logical than the other.

  • And the problem is that language on the vocabulary

  • level doesn't follow logic.

  • Vocabulary is just, anything goes.

  • BRADY HARAN: Which is ironic when you're discussing

  • mathematics, which is so the opposite.

  • DR. LYNNE MURPHY: [LAUGHTER]

  • Yeah, absolutely.

  • One cat is fluffy.

  • Two cats are fluffy.

  • So in English, we mark the number in a sentence in

  • various places.

  • We can do it with a numeral.

  • We can do it with a plural suffix.

  • And we do it on the verb.

  • So math is fun.

  • The question comes, when you've got that S there, what

  • are you going to put here?

  • Is this S telling you that it's plural or not?

  • And the fact of the matter is, people say maths is fun.

  • They don't say maths are fun.

  • In linguistics, when things are wrong, we put a star in

  • front of them, an asterisk, to signal that.

  • So that's kind of--

  • BRADY HARAN: That's the smoking gun.

  • DR. LYNNE MURPHY: That's the smoking gun.

  • You don't have one mathematic, two mathematics.

  • BRADY HARAN: I now believe you that it's not plural.

  • Why do we have an S on the end of mathematics?

  • DR. LYNNE MURPHY: OK.

  • Well, it's a long story, starting in Greek--

  • which doesn't have an S on the end of mathematics, but it did

  • have an A, which was the plural ending there.

  • BRADY HARAN: So that was mathematika.

  • DR. LYNNE MURPHY: Mathematika.

  • So that A there was taking an adjective for mathematic and

  • making it into a noun.

  • So the way to make an adjective into a noun in Greek

  • was to add this A, which was a plural marker.

  • So what it meant was all the mathy stuff, right?

  • So all the mathematical stuff.

  • And so you get that in physics, you get that in

  • linguistics, you get that in all of these sort of

  • Greek-rooted studies of meanings.

  • BRADY HARAN: What, the A became an S, did it?

  • DR. LYNNE MURPHY: So the A became an S in English because

  • the people who were taking these words from Greek knew

  • enough Greek to know that was the plural.

  • Brought the plural into English.

  • But then it evolved away from the plural very quickly in

  • English, because we weren't treating it as meaning all the

  • things to do with X. We were treating it as meaning, the

  • study of X, which is a more singular meaning.

  • Well, the thing about language is people get very

  • nationalistic about these things.

  • Your language is a huge part of your identity.

  • If somebody else says something a different way, you

  • want to believe that the way you say it is right.

  • I've been confronted about people who are angry when

  • people say, "you do the math" instead of "you do the maths,"

  • as an expression.

  • And I think that's kind of rich, because I believe the

  • original was American, and it was originally "you do the

  • math."

  • But yeah, I'm not sure why this one

  • exercises people so much.

  • Maybe because it is more of a scientific group who's worried

  • about it, or because you think that since mathematics is

  • precise, the word for it should be standardized.

  • I'm not sure.

  • Aluminium versus aluminum is the other one that really,

  • really gets people.

  • So that sort of goes along with that hypothesis that it's

  • the scientific ones that really rankle.

  • -I don't know about Americans in general, but I can say that

  • for me, when I moved to London, I was really thrown by

  • the double numbers thing for quite a while.

-Math.

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是數學還是數學?- 數字愛好者 (Is it Math or Maths? - Numberphile)

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    liuyangism 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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