Mathematics Spelling: Singular or Plural?

[Redsummers]

Precisely, about the spelling of the word 'Mathematics'.

I guess that everybody here would agree to just call it 'Mathematics', but there are some doubts I have regarding its linguistic properties.

Would you say is it a singular or a plural noun? I have personally seen it as both...
Then, what's with the informal abbreviation of 'math' and 'maths'? Is it just American/British spelling differences?

I was also wondering if it could be called 'Mathematic'... In Romance Languages, as in French, we could say 'Mathématiques' (plural) or 'Mathématique' (singular); and same for catalan, spanish, italian etc.

In fact, the Bourbaki group always used the singular form since they preferred to think about 'mathematic(s)' as an individual structure. (Yeah, okay, there's way more philosophy behind their use of the 'singular form' but that's not the main discussion.)Anyway, thanks for posting!Edit: Now that I see my poll... I wrote 'Mathematics is a...' lol, should've been more like 'is/are'. But anyway, I see that is 'singular' is winning.

 

[micromass]

I think mathematics is both singular and plural...

 

[Redsummers]

Yeah I see, so I guess one could say both 'mathematics are...' and 'mathematics is...'. But certainly not 'mathematic is...', right?

 

[l-1j-cho]

well, I have heard that all sort of fields of study that ends with a suffix (ics) is considered as singular (mathematics, economics, politics, physics...). Don't trust me 100% cos english is not my first language!

 

[flyingpig]

Maths vs Math debate

 

[drankin]

Math wins every time.