Vocabulary of Mathematics

This article provides an overview of research on mathematical terminology and its relationship to general language and to the didactics of mathematics. The article presents models which classify mathematical terminology depending on how the terminology is related to general language. Furthermore, the article shows how different parts of speech are used in mathematical language. The parts of speech presented are nouns, adjectives, verbs, pronouns, conjunctions, and number words. Most of the examples originate from Indo-European languages, but other language families are taken into consideration as well. Wherever possible, the discussion is enriched with corpus data. In addition to parts of speech, the article examines mathematical symbols and terminological differences between languages. The origins of mathematical terminology are described as well as its formalization in definitions. In addition, the article presents didactic perspectives on learning terminology, in particular how multilingual learners acquire mathematical terminology. Dictionary projects on mathematical terminology are also presented. In the end, the article indicates some current research gaps.