Chinese -- mathematical friendlier than English

[Altair]

I wonder if it may not be the mathematical knowledge that affects the language, rather than the other way around. For instance, the usage of 零 ling2 seems like something that could have come from a society thinking in terms of the rods or lines of an abacus, rather than something that would naturally arise spontaneously.

If the Swiss are the best at math, with all their linguistic "confusion," I would think the answer is not because of the ease of their languages, but because of their educational system. Counting is not particularly simple in any of their official languages.

The Sumerians may have been first in math, but there insights left us with such cumbersome things as the pervasive use of 60 in calculting units of time.

By the way, although standard French has all sorts of non-decimal anomalies, some dialects have more simplified ways of counting. For instance, from what I understand in Belgium and Switzerland, they use words like huitante (or octante) and nonante for 80 and 90 (rather than counting in multiples of twenty). I think I have heard something similar about the extistence of a "septante" for 70, rather than using "soissante dix" ("sixty ten"). Despite this, standard French shows no inclination to adopt the more "sophisticated" systems of its sister dialects.

I also would not call the Japanese counting system simple. Although they seem to have adopted Sino-Japanese for formal purposes, the system in daily use is incredibly complex, because of the unsystematic mixing of Chinese and native words. Days of the month are counted one way, days of the week another, pencils another, people another, etc. With all this complexity, Japanese kids seem to do quite well in learning math.

I think that there is little correlation between grammatical sophistication about most matters and scientific sophistication. For maybe a few weeks, English speaking kids may be confused as to how 11 and 12 relate to one, ten, and two, but I think this confusion quickly disappears.

Would anyone accept that English-speaking kids grow up with a better grasp of time relationships than Chinese-speaking kids because their language systematically distinguishes between past, present, and future in both absolute and relative senses? Such argumentation usually seems better at highlighting cultural issues than illuminating true cause and effect.

[shibo77]

Right, a culture's understanding of the mathematics affected their number system in their language. I have no experience of course. These mathematical concepts can be understood relatively easily, and the difference between the number systems affecting a child's understanding of mathematics is very small.

Right, Belgian and Swiss French uses 70septante, 80huitante, 90nonante.

Japanese has two sets of numbers, one the loaned from China, the other the native. The native is used for counting. In Mandarin Chinese only "two" is different.

(cardinal/ordinal/counter/pronoun)

一yi1 第一di4yi1 一x yi1 ~ ~

二er4 第二di4er4 两x liang3 们,俩 m2n2,lia3

三san1 第三di4san1 三x san1 们,仨 men2,sa1

四si4 第四di4si4 四x si4 们,四 men2,si4

五wu3 第五di4wu3 五x wu3 们,伍,伍 men2,wu3,wu3/wu5

-Shibo

[朋诚]

9x9 song or 九九歌 is something unique in terms of making something easier to memorise. to this day i still use this song to calculate.

i understand if i was brought up in a english speaking country i may be able to recite "seven by eight equals fifty six." but to be fair, this sentence comprise at least 12 syllables whereas "七八五十六" has only five syllables. i would incline that 5 is easier than 12 in terms of reciting and memorizing, especially for children as young as 6.

yet to conclude that the language itself is the reason for chinese kids' better performance in math is a long shot.

[Ian_Lee]

朋诚:

When I retrieved this thread, I was referencing to another thread which some excerpted articles said that Chinese language learning can enhance the math ability:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1787

[Taibei]

And I and others ripped the articles apart. So why revive this?

[Ian_Lee]

Taibei:

You didn't rip that article apart.

You were just getting too emotional (I never understand why such academic issue can get some posters emotional) and started to use some abstract descriptive term like "absurd" to denounce that article and even subjective opinion like I wasn't aware that the decimal number system needed so much reinforcement.

I have a philosophy not to engage in further discussion when fellow poster starts to get emotional or being subjective. That is why I discontinued discussion on that thread.

[dmoser]

Actually, there is some empirical evidence that suggests that kids learning Chinese (or Korean or Japanese), with its regular base ten number words, learn the principles of base ten much earlier than their English speaking counterparts. This is due to the regularity of Chinese mentioned in an earlier post, the fact that the teens and the tens (10, 20, 30) are completely transparent in Chinese, whereas in English they are puzzlingly opaque (What does "twelve" have to do with "ten"? How many tens is "twenty" or "thirty"?) Korean, Japanese and Chinese kids can manipulate base ten up to 6 months earlier than English-speaking kids. THe difference probably cancels out later on, but it is a definite advantage early on.

Those interested can check out work by James Stigler and my old teacher at University of Michigan, Harold Stevenson.

James Stigler, Michelle Perry (1990) "Mathematics learning in Japanese, Chinese and American classrooms", in Stigler (ed) "Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparative Human Development, Cambridge Univ. Press.

Plus a host of other articles.

Some of this stuff might be on the Web. You could try to Google words like "base ten" and "Chinese" along with the names of these people. I haven't tried it.

[bathrobe]

朋诚 wrote:

i understand if i was brought up in a english speaking country i may be able to recite "seven by eight equals fifty six." but to be fair, this sentence comprise at least 12 syllables whereas "七八五十六" has only five syllables

I thought it had already been established in this thread that Western kids (at least Australian kids) don't learn "seven by eight equals fifty six". They learn "seven eights are fifty-six" (7 syllables, of which three are unstressed). That is what we used to chant in school (in Australia) and that is still how I do calculations mentally.

Why keep dishing up incorrect information?

[bathrobe]

Ian Lee said:

I have a philosophy not to engage in further discussion when fellow poster starts to get emotional or being subjective. That is why I discontinued discussion on that thread.

If this is not subjective and discriminatory, what is?

Please tell me which public grade school in which country offers such wide curriculum as you mention.

For public school in US, I only know that they install metal screen detector at the entrance.

Students attending public school in US is only slighty less risky than soldiers stationing in Iraq.

There seems to be something of a provocative direction to some of your postings here and elsewhere, espousing ethnocentric (some might say chauvinistic) Chinese interpretations of the world, based at times on flawed or biased grounds, not to mention myths. (I am still waiting for you to respond to my questioning of your factual grounds at this thread: http://www.chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1086 ).

If you want to throw out provocative assertions, you are free to do so, but you should expect emotional responses. To pull out on the grounds that people are getting emotional or subjective does not seem terribly intellectually honest or brave, IMHO.