Math

Stupid questions. They take me hours to comprehend. I am blonde. Anyway: Width of pixel is three times width of triad. Monitor is 1280 X 1024. CRT is 50cm with depth of 25cm. I am looking for spacing between holes in the shadow mask. I think I need to look elsewhere.

Where can I find a good math site? Math is obviously not my fortee.

huh?

By the way it’s mathS.

You probably want a hardware site, rather than a 3d programming site.

Breenda is most probably American and all Americans cant spell, they seem to think maths is pronounced and spelt math!!!
Its colour not color!

Tim

Actually if you tried looking it up in the dictionary before you make an idiot of your self they are math and color. Math is short for mathematics which is already plural. It’s colour if you are french but for the English part of the world it is color.=)

Nope wrong. Color is the American way of spelling it, whilst the British and South-African(me) spells it colour. But in the graphics language it’s color, for obvious reasons.

And if you are french it is “couleur”…

I love dropping by the Beginners part of the forum when I am fed up talking about OpenGL !

Regards.

Eric

Hahahahah!

It’s MathS. The only people who say “Math” are Americans. And British people were around before America was colonised, therefore “maths” came first, and you yanks just can’t spell.

But anyway…

Yeah, you see the problem was that all those early english colonialists weren’t exactly the brightest bulbs in the pack.

Sure, as the first people to be sent to america where prisonners and such “not-anymore-wanted” people

I didn’t study (much) N.American history, but are you sure you’re not talking about Australia?! Australia had all of Britan’s unwanted elements sent here. Yay. ('cept for South Australia, 'cause we’re special. Apparently we sound snobbish because of it, too. Well, that was the opinion of a Victorian… but we all know how much VICTORIA SUCK. ah ha ha hahahahahha)

It IS maths, 'cause you do more than one symbol manipulation, so its plural. =) It isn’t just ‘math’ because its the shortened form of ‘mathematics’, in the same way you can talk about group of automobiles and lots of autoS. You add the s because its plural, irrespective if its an abbreviaton. Feh.

Another cool thing which my economics/commerce brother told me about is that americans spell ‘cheque’ as ‘check’. Gees… talk about wanting phonetics to the nth degree. What next? Turn phone into fone? Light into lite? School into skool? Cheques are spelt that way because they are… its a noun… a name given to the piece of paper to authorise the transfer of money. Why the hell change the spelling?!

cheers,
John

I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with John. It is spelled “math”, which is an abreviation for “mathematics”. The word “math” can be plural or singular, just as the word “fish” can refer to one fish or many fish. Also, since our country was never occupied by the French at any point we do not use the French spelling of the word “check”. Just my two cents.

I acknowledge (more than conceed) the point about maths. I guess it isn’t REALLY plural after all but just a noun ending in ‘s’, in the same way that, er… jesus isn’t the plural of jesu =)

I disagree about the cheque/check thing, tho’. I’d argue that cheque is the name given to the piece of paper that authorises transfer of money, ergo, it is a NOUN that somoene has invented and thus (kinda) ‘transcends translation’. I’d be sorely pissed if I went to France and people started calling me ‘jean’, insisting that is my name. No, no, I’d politely point out; my birth certificate says my name is John, and it can NOT be translated into some other language. Cheque is a noun; check is a verb… but since both english and french have the verb meaning to…

hmm, this isn’t very convincing. Another way of putting it.

Suppose I invent some cool funky widget, and I say “this widget is called a snarfle”. I market my widget, and I can say to people “have you got a snarfle? You should buy a snarfle, they’re sturdy and asthetically pleasing”. Snarfles sell well because I employ a lot of attractive woman to model snarfles on the beach. Right? A snarfle. In english, no less. Now, suppose there is some wacky country out there that has snarphle as a verb. Note: it sounds the SAME as snarfle, but is spelt differently. Moreover, its a verb. So, in their language they might say “hinga bottle snarphle pale ale?” and such things. What happens if I market my snarfle product in this country? Do they say "hmm, snarfle sounds similar to snarphle, and althoygh they are entirely different things (one being a sturdy and asthetically pleasing device, and the other meaning to consume vast quantities of alcohol), then we SHALL spelll this new device patented by some other guy in another language the SAME as WE spell a PHONETICALLY SIMILAR WORD BUT WITH A DIFFERENT MEANING.

a cheque is a different thing than the verb ‘to check’. moreover, a cheque is a noun, and can’t REALLY be translated. do you wacky american’s have a different name for sydney harbour bridge? In fact… you guys might spell sydney as sidney. Do you spell sydney harbour bridge as ‘sidney harbour bridge’ soley because YOU don’t like using y in sydney?

Cheques are different from check, so we can say “did you check the cheque?” when we’re worried about getting a dodgy cheque, or “did you check out if the guy checked the vehicle?” to check to see if someone has checked the vechille, or even!! to be REALLY confusing!! “did you check that the guy checked the cheque from the guy in the chequered shirt?”

feh. ranting. gotta love it. <ting> time for lunch.

cheers,
John

I would continue ranting with stuff on American history, colonisation, the uses of s and z, but I have done the unthinkable and started some amazing Off Topic war.
Tim

Originally posted by Tone:
… just as the word “fish” can refer to one fish or many fish.

Spelling aside, my handle refers to just one ffish thanks very much

My Concise Oxford English Dictionary 10th Ed contains all the Americanisms mentioned so far but points out that they are dialect and not proper English. I think it’s sad that English seems destined to be replaced by American one day. What will happen to words like queue? Line up just doesn’t do it for me.
BTW, comments by the US posters make me wonder what kind of dictionaries they use? I would have thought the Oxford dictionary would have been universal but I guess there are special American dictionaries used over there. Just curious.
What a fun topic Tim!

I told myself I wasn’t going to add to this rather offtopic thread, but I guess I will now.

I don’t have one handy to actually look up any of these words, but the dictionary I consider consulting most often is Webster’s.

So far as the different spellings, can’t you just let it be? It seems kind of arrogant and pompous to me when people say that their spelling is correct and any culture that spells it different is somehow intellectually inferior. It’s a cultural difference. Just let it be.

If you look in an American dictionary it is color, look in any other dictionary and its colour, americans are lazy with their 'u’s…harbor

Originally posted by john:
I disagree about the cheque/check thing, tho’. I’d argue that cheque is the name given to the piece of paper that authorises transfer of money, ergo, it is a NOUN that somoene has invented and thus (kinda) ‘transcends translation’. I’d be sorely pissed if I went to France and people started calling me ‘jean’, insisting that is my name.

What you must realize John, is the difference between a pronoun and a noun. John is a pronoun, not a noun. Check is a noun not a pronoun. A pronoun is the name of something, a noun is a thing. Check is not the name given to a piece of paper, it is rather a thing all its own like rock scissors or paper. If it were a name, it would always be capitalized. Like Bill Clinton or Jacques Chirac, or shudder Margaret Thatcher.

You are correct that names are not translated and things are. You are incorrect however in the assumption that cheques are names or pronouns.

It should also be noted that there are indeed two languages we are speaking of here. One is English, and the other is American English. They don’t differ by much, but they do differ. Neither is incorrect, nor any more correct than the other.

[This message has been edited by element (edited 07-13-2001).]

I know the difference between a pronoun and a noun. I used the pronoun as an example, but I also invented a new noun (the snarfle, its a cool study, asthetically pleasing device). Highlighting the distinction between pronouns and nounts is NOT an argument against changing colour->color, cheque->check, etc, which was my point.

My … bemused puzzling over the american way is why they feel it necessary to change things that don’t need changing. I particularly like the point “oh, but we were never invaded by the French.” You’d be stunned by how much of English is derived from other languages. Do you call a dog, a ‘canine’? 'cause canine is based on the latin word for dog (which I forget, ‘cause I did latin far too long ago). Have the americans changed THAT, because N.A wasnt’ invaded by the romans, either. <shrugs>

Anyway, its all just a matter of arguing for fun. =)

I guess.

cheers,
John

did somebody turn this into a grammar forum or what? The best suggestion I have for the original poster of this topic is to look on this site for links.