Dave, on the commentary for "A Knights Tale" (bought on the off-chance 'cos it was a fiver and suprised how much I liked it...), the idea was posited that we here in the UK do "Maths" because we can do more than the one sum.

Seems *right* somehow, doesn't it?

PS: Guy, the shortening of mathematics would be to maths. Still a plural. Math would be the shortening of mathematic, which seems to be a possessive to me, but that's well out of my league in root transitions.

Should be either alumium or aluminium aluminum is just plain wrong.

Davy discovered it and called it alumium. Eventually he got drunk and decided to call it aluminum, but then realised how stupid that was and agreed to follow the nomenclature of namin metallic elements and named it aluminium.

The root of alumini-whatever is alum, pronounced al-uh-m so al-uh-min-ee-um sounds OK, as does al-uh-m-ee-um

but al-uh-minum is just silly.

Al-ooooooooo-minum is like some very small indian potato based dish.