this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Ha. As someone from the "mathematics is shortened to maths" part of the world, this sounds weird to me. I'd probably say "the maths mathses". I just thought you might enjoy that.
Anyway, I Googled the problem you presented, and came across this excellent answer:
The whole answer is worth reading, but that part there is the crux of it. It goes back to one of my earliest comments on this topic in this thread. The problem isn't that maths is weird, it's that language's ability to describe mathematical problems is lacking. There are so many different ways to translate the described problem into mathematical formulae and they necessarily carry assumptions. Even far more subtle assumptions than I at first thought.
I know this wasn’t the main point of your comment, but to be grammatically correct, it would be “the maths math.”
Plural verbs go with their plural noun subject and don’t need the s:
And like you said, maths being short for mathematics means it’s plural.
Since using "maths" as a verb is very much nonstandard, I would argue against trying to apply any rigorous rules to it. It's about the vibes of the thing.