I don't speak many languages fluently. Please correct me if I wrote numbers wrong. Thank you!1062Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8xCTFwsuXu
ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, ku, ju, ju ichi, ju ni...1062Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsxeB0CSr8B
hana, dul, set, net, daseot, yeoseot, ilgop, yeodeol, ahop, yeol, yeol-hana, yeol-dul...
il, i, sam, sa, o, yuk, chil, pa, gu, sip, sib-il, sib-i...
yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi, shi yi, shi er...
jat, ji, saam, sei, ng, luk, cat, baat, gau, sap, sap jat, sap ji...
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve...
Why does eleven and twelve sound so different from one and two? I think that that's a problem.
A common stereotype for Asians is that they're good at mathematics. And the ones that come over to America seem to show great promise in that, very often. You wanna know their secret? It's their language and their culture.
In Japanese, eleven and twelve is literally ten-one and ten-two. In Korean, it's the same; in Sino-Korean, it's the same; in Mandarin Chinese, it's the same; in Cantonese Chinese, it's the same.
In English, eleven and twelve are so different from their friends sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. Same with teen and twenty being so different from sixty, seventy, eighty, and ninety. It goes on. Instead of saying ten-one, ten-two... and two-ten, three-ten... we say eleven, twelve... and twenty, thirty...
This oddity in our numeral system delays us in learning mathematics. A Chinese or Korean or Japanese, etc. child can hear a number and instantly calculate. An English or American or Irish, etc. child has to translate eleven, twelve, etc. into a number before calculating, since the numbers are so odd. Also, saying stuff like eleventy-one or fifteen hundred-two messes people up, too.
The Old English way had it the same. An, twegen, threo, feower, fif, seox, seofon, eahta, nigon, tien, endleofon, twelf. Instead of doing thir-teen (thir-tine), there was threotine. Threo-tine. So, one may think, their thought was have [number]-tine be the counter example of Asia's ten-[number], save endleofon and twelf. However, sixteen is not seox-tine, but sixtine.
The numeral system in English (or other Latin-based languages (i.e. Spanish, German, etc.)) has deep roots of being so irregular. That's why Asians are stereotyped into being good at mathematics.
But that's not the only reason.
You know how honor is a big part of old Asian culture? Honor and determination. And don't even get me started on their agricultural or feudal systems. That old cultural legacy also helps with academics.
English is a very irregular language. Well, most languages are, but in numeral system sense, Asian languages generally have it more regular than English does. Eleven, twelve, thirteen? Twenty-one, twenty-two? No; ten-one, ten-two, ten-three... two-ten-one, two-ten-two...
Wanna read more about this? Pick up the book Outliers at a bookstore, or online. It's a good read, talking all about outliers in the world.
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