[pjc50]

The pronunciation is what it is. The orthography is the problem.

(Many words place names long pre-date any kind of attempt to regularize English spelling, and in any case come from fusions of Brythonic, Norman, Roman, Norwegian etc languages. This is why it's difficult to predict the pronunciation of one word from the spelling of another.)

[ergvgdvgrd]

100% my point. Drawing a line at the purity of "maths" over "math" is the beginning of a rock fight in a village of glass houses.

[pbhjpbhj]

Maybe, but 'we can't provide logical rules for names acquired over a millennium ago' seems like a poor reason to say 'therefore we shouldn't apply consistent rules to recent conventions'.

Someone asked about physic ... well people used to use physick in [late medieval?] British English... but that's for what we might call medicine now.