Chinese, Japanese, count with ease
(From The Math Gene, which I recently reviewed.)
Chinese and Japanese kids consistently outperform their American and European counterparts in mathematical tests. Besides cultural and school system differences, language seems to play a part in the disparity.
Doing arithmetic, and in particular learning multiplication tables, is simply easier for Chinese and Japanese children, because their number words are shorter and simpler…
I’m glad that my mom made me memorise the multiplication table in Chinese as a kid. I still remember those tormented days going “二一二, 二二四, 二三六, 二四八… ”
There’s more:
The grammatical rules for building up number words in Chinese and Japanese are also much easier than in English or other European languages. For instance, the Chinese rule for making words for numbers past ten is simple: 11 is ten one, 12 is ten two, 13 is ten three, and so on, up to two ten for 20, two ten one for 21 […]. Think how much more complicated is the English system […]. A recent study by Kevin Miller showed that language differences cause English-speaking children to lag a whole year behind their Chinese counterparts in learning to count.
Last and certainly not least,
In addition to being easier to learn, the Chinese number word system also makes elementary arithmetic easier, because the language rules closely follow the base-10 structure of the Arabic system.
On a somewhat coincidental note, I happen to be reading a book on Chinese grammar. Not sure if I’ll ever finish it though - grammars aren’t always the most exciting bedtime material…
Chinese and Japanese kids are far more willing than Western kids to rote learn stuff, so when the test requires the use of some formula or algorithm, the rote learners will always win… (More on this here and here).
Further to your vocab/math examples, it’s so stupid in English that we have to clarify in conversation thirTY or thirTEEN as they are often confused. Chinese/Japanese never suffers from this.
Comment by zac — October 4, 2005 @ 3:50 pm