Am Freitag 19 Februar 2010 15:34:27 schrieb Jim DeMarco: > A quick Google dictionary search appears to define only "mathematics"; > and there are 8K references to "maths libraries" and 30K references to > "math libraries" (so "maths" is not as frequently used as "math", but is > far more common than *I* would have expected).
Google counts whatever grammar or spelling appears in newsgroups, forums, and probably in our emails as well. I read some (even some serious) discussions on that topic, especially for German, because we decided[1] to reform a large part of our grammar and spelling (that's why LaTeX' babel package has [german] and [ngerman]). One interesting point from a language scientist was that: if the majority of a people (in this case he meant "people" like native speakers, not a a nation) says something a certain way, we accept this a the "official" way after an appropriate time[2]. So, if anything is misspelled long enough throughout the media, it will eventually appear in the dictionaries. I wonder what would happen if the same "logic" were applied in Ethics, like taxpayers -- oh, wait, it is :) Please don't misunderstand me here. This is no language battle. I just don't agree that something becomes "right" as long as the majority does it. Neither do I think "right" is an adequate term for languages. SCNR, Jan -- [1] for appropiate definition of "decided". There was neither a majority in the public nor have we been asked in the first place [2] which was of course never specified -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-chat FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
