Occupational medicine

The ninth entry is l’ergonomia, and the English word for it carries a piece of grammar that catches out every learner arriving from Italian. Italian writes l’ergonomia, plainly singular, exactly as it writes l’economia and la statistica. English writes « ergonomics », with an s on the end, and then treats it as singular anyway: « ergonomics is a young discipline », never « are ». The whole family behaves in that way — « physics is », « economics is », « statistics is », « acoustics is » — because the s belongs to the name of the subject and not to any counting. The trap is that several of them keep a second life in which the plural comes back. When the word stops naming the field and starts naming the properties of one particular thing, the verb turns: « the acoustics of this hall are poor », « the economics of the project are doubtful », « the statistics are out of date ». One written form therefore covers two different agreements, and the sentence has to be read before the verb can be chosen. L’ergonomia never puts that question to anybody.