American expat reveals 1 Aussie word she’ll never get used to
Aussies are constantly confusing Americans with our pronunciation of certain words, and this time all it’s taking is a single letter.
An American expat living in Australia is struggling to understand the way we pronounce one particular word Down Under.
Lexie B, who is originally from Houston, Texas, moved to Brisbane with her family in 2024.
While the 38-year-old may have braced herself for Vegemite and kangaroos, there’s one Aussie quirk no one warned her about.
Taking to TikTok, she asked why Australians insist on saying “maths” instead of “math” when shortening the word “mathematics”.
And it seems we weren’t shy in explaining the logic.
“I appreciate all the Aussies who explained why it’s said this way. It makes sense now,” she told news.com.au.
“Although I’ll be honest, I’m still working on remembering to say it the non-American way. I’m having fun learning so much while living overseas.”
In the United States, it’s common for people to say “math”. Here, we’ve added a cheeky “s”.
That single letter has sparked a full-blown cultural reflection from Lexie.
“The truth is that one thing that bothers me about Australia. It’s so stupid. It’s the word ‘maths’. Why you gotta pluralise it?” the mum said.
“I probably just don’t understand why it’s plural. I need to do some research.”
She admits it just doesn’t add up.
“We don’t say ‘chemistries’, we don’t say ‘englishes’,” she reasoned, joking that the “s” might simply be harder to pronounce with her accent.
The answer is actually simple: “mathematics” is already a plural word, which is why we naturally shorten it to “maths”.
It turns out, when it comes to “maths”, the extra “s” really does add up.
Hundreds of Aussies flooded her comments section to help her with the calculations.
“You don’t learn mathematic — you learn mathematics, so for short, maths.”
“Because the noun is mathematics, not mathematic.”
“It’s short for the plural word mathematics. Chemistry and English are singular.”
One user joked: “Would it be better if we dropped the ‘s’, added an ‘o’ instead and called it ‘matho’?”
Others turned the tables, pointing out the quirks of American English.
“‘Math’ equally grinds my gears. It’s short for mathematics, hence the s,” said one annoyed Aussie.
“What I don’t understand is why Americans say ‘Legos’. It’s Lego,” clapped another.
As someone else mused: “It grinds our gears to hear ‘math’ just as much, so we’re even!”
Meanwhile, fellow Americans jumped in to share solidarity.
“It took me longer than I’ll admit to figure this out. Even so, ‘maths’ doesn’t sound right to my ears — and never will.”
It’s not the first time we’ve confused expats with our alphabet differences, and it likely won’t be the last.
Back in June, American expat Maura Sheahan took to TikTok to explain how, since moving to Melbourne, she’s found the pronunciation of words and letters particularly tricky to adjust to.
“There is a controversy here when it comes to the last letter of the alphabet,” she said in her post.
“They say the letter ‘Z’ as ‘Zed’ here.”
She pointed out the buck doesn’t stop there.
“Not only do they call it ‘zed’, but they’ve also ditched it in every single word,” she concluded.
She was referring to the difference between US and UK English, including words such as “customise” versus “customize”.
Aussies came to the defence of the letter “Z”, just as they did with “S”.
“No controversy here. America is wrong,” declared one.
“We use the Queen’s (now King’s) English,” added another.
While another wrote: “The only downfall is that the end of our alphabet song doesn’t rhyme. But while we’re here, you should bring up the US refusal to use the letter ‘U’. colour, flavour, etc.”
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Originally published as American expat reveals 1 Aussie word she’ll never get used to
