naturalplastic wrote:
...In the USA- you can be good at, or bad at "math". But NEVER at "maths".
But you can excel (or not) at "mathematics".
"Maths" just sounds funny to American ears.
On one hand- I guess we americans think of "math" as being like "water" - or like "music"- a collective thing that comes en mass through a pipeline.
Whats more interesting is a seemingly more fundamental split in the grammar in two kinds of English.
In America "the crowd" and "the governement" would be thought of as one entity and would be spoken of in the singular: "the crowd IS" or "the governement IS".
Americans also plural the word "cannon" as "cannons," which is dead wrong.
I agree about their perception of mathematics and government as being a "collective entity." Even water is used in the plural form "waters" on nature programs or when referring to territorial boundaries among other themes.