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Maths in a foreign language

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beano
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 Message 1 of 20
03 December 2013 at 4:25pm | IP Logged 
Whether we like it or not, we are all taught maths in our native tongue (or the country's main language) from early childhood until late teens. Therefore we all have a mathematical vocabulary at hand, which sometimes spills over into general conversation as well as being required for certain professions.

But how do we cope with mathematical terms in our target languages? We probably haven't gone through a specific mathematical education and how often do we need to talk about angles, circumference, graphs, averages and equations in the languages we learn?

Even at the level of counting, people find it very difficult to perform mental arithmetic in a foreign language. You notice this even in countries where English is universally spoken to a good level. You are dealing with a cashier in English and he / she thinks aloud in the native language to complete the calculation. No doubt you can train yourself to address numerical issues but most people probably won't do this.
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renaissancemedi
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 Message 2 of 20
03 December 2013 at 4:28pm | IP Logged 
You are right. I can't do it!
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Via Diva
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 Message 3 of 20
03 December 2013 at 4:39pm | IP Logged 
I'm sorry, but isn't this situation the same for every subject? For example, I really had had to force my brain to remember that Pb is lead (whereas in Russian we have свинец) or even that Na is sodium (натрий), not to mention mixing up of Latin names and English equivalents.
Today while thinking to myself I really caught myself up on a account "how to say x*y and x^y correctly"... However, you can just learn the vocabulary and use it. Why to learn numbers then?

Edited by Via Diva on 03 December 2013 at 4:39pm

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tarvos
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 Message 4 of 20
03 December 2013 at 5:07pm | IP Logged 
I did maths and physics in English more often than in Dutch
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beano
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 Message 5 of 20
03 December 2013 at 7:22pm | IP Logged 
I've seen many people who speak English well switch to their native tongue when totting up figures aloud. Im
sure I read somewhere that suspected spies under interrogation are often asked to perform rapid-fire mental
arithmetic in order to try and expose their true identity.

Obviously if you do a maths/science/engineering degree and some of the instruction is in a language other
than your native tongue then you will develop skills in that area. But specialist professionals aside, I think a lot
of people revert to their own language for number work.

Edited by beano on 03 December 2013 at 7:25pm

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tarvos
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 Message 6 of 20
03 December 2013 at 7:30pm | IP Logged 
beano wrote:
I've seen many people who speak English well switch to their native
tongue when totting up figures aloud. Im
sure I read somewhere that suspected spies under interrogation are often asked to
perform rapid-fire mental
arithmetic in order to try and expose their true identity.

Obviously if you do a maths/science/engineering degree and some of the instruction is
in a language other
than your native tongue then you will develop skills in that area. But specialist
professionals aside, I think a lot
of people revert to their own language for number work.


I used to take maths/science in English even in high school and I started doing
arithmetic in English when I was 4-5. Maybe in Korean it'll give me trouble because I
can't remember the numbers.

Not in English or German or French, I assure you.
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emk
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 Message 7 of 20
03 December 2013 at 7:56pm | IP Logged 
I'm taking an online statistics course through Coursera from an engineering school in France. The first two weeks have been a good challenge—there's so much specialized mathematical terminology, basic stuff, that I just don't know in French. How do you read summations (the kind with capital sigma)? Variables with subscripts? Powers?

Fortunately, a lot is quite obvious from context, especially if since I already know some of the math. But still, I'm glad I can rewind the lectures and turn on subtitles when things get tricky.

But I'm pretty sure if you take several semesters of math classes in another language, you'll have no trouble mastering the necessary terminology. It's the usual problem: The upper levels of a language are endless, and natives have a lifetime to learn the topics which interest them. Fortunately the human brain, even the adult human brain, can soak up new terminology for an already-known subject terrifyingly quickly.
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Fuenf_Katzen
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 Message 8 of 20
03 December 2013 at 7:59pm | IP Logged 
Interestingly, I remember a class in college where the professor asked everyone (native English and non-native English speakers alike) to count from 1-10 without telling us why. Everyone counted in their native language. The purpose of that was to show that counting is one of the areas that more often defaults to the native language. In my case, one of the things that is the hardest for me in any language is remembering numbers. At the same time, it is something that's very trainable. I couldn't handle numbers very well in German, but actually focusing on them made them fairly automatic. Now that's the language I default to when I'm trying to handle Polish numbers.   I can't exactly explain what the particular issue is with numbers, but that one area is definitely harder for me to switch over. That isn't even referring to doing actual math in the language, just counting.

Edited by Fuenf_Katzen on 03 December 2013 at 8:01pm



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