Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Try this. It's a collective noun:
Mathematics is a field of study/work. Abbreviated to math.
Singular aggregration of related/similar specializations/variations.
Just as Engineering is a singular aggregation of related/similar specializations and medicine is an aggregation of related specializations.
Treating math as a singular is treating it as a collective. A collection of related specializations.
I'll leave it to the brits to explain why they treat the medicine and engineering fields as collectives but not math.  |
English is incredibly full of exceptions. I've always wondered if any other languages are as bad.
The other oddity to me about plurals with the Brits is how they treat company names as plural; e.g., they'd say "Amazon are releasing a new Kindle."