Language and Math

I know language affects a lot of aspects of culture but I never realized how it could affect subjects such as math. I’ve heard the saying that Asians are better in math than Americans which proves to be true but always wondered why? Is there a reason why they are better at us in math? Well, writers such as Malcolm Gladwell think that their success in math is derived from their number system in the language.

"Take a look at the following list of numbers: 4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6. Read them out loud. Now look away and spend twenty seconds memorizing that sequence before saying them out loud again. If you speak English, you have about a 50 percent chance of remembering that sequence perfectly. If you're Chinese, though, you're almost certain to get it right every time." Gladwell wrote this is his book and explains that the English number system is more complicated than the Chinese one. His studies showed that it took our brains longer to remember our more complicated number system and sustain it in a memory loop that only lasted two seconds; however,  the Chinese number system is shorter so it took a fraction of the time to learn and remember their numbers so they would get it right almost every time. The Chinese number system is more logical and simpler to understand so it allows the people who speak it to understand math quicker. For instance our numbers after ten is eleven and twelve, two totally different words to represent numbers. You can see how this could get confusing. But in the Chinese number system these two numbers would be ten- one (+-) and ten-two(+=) which makes remembering it so much easier and adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying easier as well. Think about the equation twelve times thirteen. In English we are comparing two numbers that sound totally different so it would take us a while to figure out that it equals 156 if we didn’t have that memorized. However, in Chinese this would be ten-two times ten-three so it would break up into ten times ten plus the ten times two and three plus the two times three which is 100+50+6=156. You can see how their number system is a more logical way in thinking and understanding numbers.

Language is a powerful thing that affects many aspects of a culture. Having a simpler number system in their language allows the Chinese people to understand math quicker than English speaking people showing yet another way language affects a culture.