I've had a few ah-has reading it but nothing compared to the passage I am in right now. His argument is the structure of the English language when it comes to expressing numbers inhibits math aptitude. He also maintains that the structure of the language is what makes many Asians cultures – Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other Chinese derivative languages – so good at math because the language expresses numbers in a very rational and easy to manipulate way.
In Chinese, they say ten-one, ten-two, ten-three instead of changing the spelling and structure. Starting from twenty it goes two-ten-one, two-ten-two, two-ten-three. Think about how much easier it is to calculate three-tens-seven plus two-tens-two.
I started thinking about how numbers are expressed in the languages that I've studied. How does English compare to its' cousins Dutch and German? How does it compare to French?
It seems as though English inherited its irregularity from the Dutch, if you go here and compare it to German, which is more regular. Old English – scroll to the end – is similar to Dutch, unsurprisingly. The numbers over 50 in French always drove me nuts – sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-eleven, sixty-twelve, then four-twenty-one, four-twenty-two to four-twenty-eleven, four-twenty-twelve. But I'm sure it's useful in adding and subtracting.
Should English reform its' expression of numbers? Given English has no 'governing body' compared to other languages – e.g. French, German, Dutch etc – it may take a while before that happens. The glacial progress of adopting the metric system illustrates the challenge.
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