Math or Maths? 2

[CajunCenturion]

In another thread, the following question was asked:

By the way, without wishing to go off topic, why do we Brits use maths while Americans use math? Is the full name mathematic or mathematics?

Anyone interested in tackling this great mystery?

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[Stella740pl]

This quote is from this link

http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-sul1.htm

posted by sleipnir214 in thread1256-888388:

The difference in spelling, and the current controversy resulting from it, must be laid at the feet of the late Noah Webster, a humourless and deeply religious schoolmaster cum failed lawyer who, after 15 years’ work, published his American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828. One cannot imagine an individual less well suited to the creation of a dictionary; he knew very little of other languages, his ideas about etymology were based more on religion and wishful thinking than historical fact (he thought all languages derived from ancient Chaldee), and he had this bee in his bonnet about simplifying the language by removing unnecessary letters from words.

His most influential book was not the Dictionary, but the earlier American Spelling Book, which went through about three hundred editions during his lifetime and after. This was very conventional by the standards of his day. It was only later that he began to advocate spelling reform, especially in a piece that had the splendid title An Essay on the Necessity, Advantages and Practicability of Reforming the Mode of Spelling, and of Rendering the Orthography of Words Correspondent to the Pronunciation, published in 1789.

His aim was to remove all extraneous letters from words and he put forward a whole range of suggestions to this end. His aim was also political: he wanted to make American orthography distinctive and through this to help weld the disparate 13 founding colonies into a nation. By 1806, though, when he published his first dictionary, he had backtracked on the more outlandish of his ideas, saying “it would be useless to attempt any change, even if practicable, in those anomalies which form whole classes of words, and in which, change would rather perplex than ease the learner” (still a strong argument against spelling reform).

Because of his spelling revisions in the 1828 dictionary, Americans now write color, jewelry, theater and aluminum, as well as sulfur. Had it not been for the conservatism of his readers and publisher—and a “dictionary war” with a rival—that forced him to modify his views, Americans would also now have tuf (for tough), groop (for group) and tung (for tongue) among many others.

 

[ZoomerZ]

Very interesting! Stella for Stella!

 

[ESquared]

Are you sure about aluminum? Another thread about that recently which supposedly nailed it down definitively said nothing about Webster. In fact, it said that aluminum was first for a short time, or at least the two terms were co-incident. (I think.)

 

[Stella740pl]

Are you sure about aluminum?

Me? I said it was a quote. As for aluminum/aluminium, here is the link from the same thread, also given by sleipnir214:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm

There is a mention of Noah Webster’s Dictionary, too.

 

[ESquared]

Thanks!

 

[Stella740pl]

After rereading ESquared's post, I've looked up both links one more time to check on aluminum/aluminium, and found something that looks like a contradiction to me (both links are from the same source):

http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-sul1.htm

[b]Because of his spelling revisions in the 1828 dictionary, Americans now write color, jewelry, theater and aluminum, as well as sulfur.[/b] Had it not been for the conservatism of his readers and publisher—and a “dictionary war” with a rival—that forced him to modify his views, Americans would also now have tuf (for tough), groop (for group) and tung (for tongue) among many others.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm

The metal was named by the English chemist Sir Humphry Davy...

Sir Humphry made a bit of a mess of naming this new element, at first spelling it alumium (this was in 1807) then changing it to aluminum, and finally settling on aluminium in 1812. His classically educated scientific colleagues preferred aluminium right from the start, because it had more of a classical ring, and chimed harmoniously with many other elements whose names ended in –ium, like potassium, sodium, and magnesium, all of which had been named by Davy.
...
[b]In the USA — perhaps oddly in view of its later history—the standard spelling was aluminium right from the start. This is the only form given in Noah Webster’s Dictionary of 1828, and seems to have been standard among US chemists throughout most of the nineteenth century;[/b] it was the preferred version in The Century Dictionary of 1889 and is the only spelling given in the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913. However, there is evidence that the spelling without the final i was used in various trades and professions in the US from the 1830s onwards and that by the 1870s it had become the more common one in American writing generally.
...
The official change in the US to the –um spelling happened quite late: the American Chemical Society only adopted it in 1925. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) officially standardised on aluminium in 1990, though this has done nothing, of course, to change the way people in the US spell it for day to day purposes.

So it seems that Noah Webster is not personally in charge for "aluminum", but Sir Humphry Davy and American Chemical Society are.

But this already was a topic of another thread.
Nice refresher.

 

[CajunCenturion]

This site Aluminium or Aluminum claims the following:

In 1808 Sir Humphrey Davy proposed the name ALUMIUM for the metal. This rather unwieldy name was soon replaced by ALUMINUM and later the word ALUMINIUM was adopted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists in order to conform with the "ium" ending of most elements.

Aluminum was the original name of this material.

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[CajunCenturion]

Aluminum was the original name of this material.

That's not accurate; original is not the right word. It would be better to say that the material was called aluminum before it was called aluminium.

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[ESquared]

I like alumium a lot better than aluminium. It seems about equal with aluminum.

 

[BobRodes]

All I know is that, having spent three years in the British school system and the rest in the American, the Brits say aluminium (AL-oo-MIN-yum) and we say aluminum. As for Maths v. Math, I believe that we have the British love of contraction as against the American of abbreviation. While we both use each, Brits tend toward contraction more than we do. For example, "Sahnt Majah" (Sergeant Major), "Lestershire" (Leicestershire) and so on.

 

[ZoomerZ]

What IS that aluminium you all so taken by?
I kept silent but I can't no more...

 

[Stella740pl]

It's that metal that planes are made of. And that's spelled "aluminium" in Britain and "aluminum" in USA. See Thread1256-888388, and scroll down to GummowN's post dated Jul.30, 2004. Read from there.

 

[ZoomerZ]

I thought that what it was before I've seen how much attention it got...then I started to doubt it.

 

[ESquared]

Self-doubt is a powerful tool. Use it or suffer the consequences!

 

[Stella740pl]

ZoomerZ,

No one said a word about the metal as such (its properties, uses, etc.). It's not the metal, it's the word, its history and its spelling that got all that attention. Isn't that why we all are here, on this forum?

 

[BobRodes]

Just so we all know, the Brits pronounce "iodine" as IODEEN, maybe because it rhymes then with fluorine, chlorine, bromine (they say bromeen, do we?) and astatine. What are those called, the Halogens?

Bob

 

[sha76]

So how do Americans pronounce iodine?

"Your rock is eroding wrong." -Dogbert

 

[LesleyW]

Just to add confusion to the Maths/Math debate, the Northern Irish pronounce Maths "Mas" with a long a.

 

[CajunCenturion]

I think that both "i-o-dyn" and "i-o-deen" are acceptable pronounciations of iodine.

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[Stella740pl]

Here is how

http://www.yourdictionary.com

pronounces it:

http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/i/i0221300.html