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Why are numbers so hard? | ||
Tags: Number System | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| CheeseInsider Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5123 days ago 193 posts - 238 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin* Studies: French, German | Message 25 of 51 19 March 2011 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree... It's really difficult -_-
Everytime I come across a number in French about 100 I have to say it in English.... -_________________- Yet I can understand the rest of the sentence. Numbers are hard man! Why can't they be easy? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Grizzly Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5069 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 26 of 51 20 March 2011 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Learning numbers in French was quite a challenge. So I did the following:
1) learn the numbers out of a book til I knew them (very slow pace) 2) record spoken numbers in random order on an mp3 ; it took some experiment to find out a suitable time space to leave between them; length of recording approx. 15 min 3) listen to this recording regularly and using the spaces between spoken numbers to imagine the number in chiphers (NO TRANSLATION!!!) (sitting in the tram or train or when eating or whatever leaves some space in my mind) By applying this practice over and over again I let my brain know that this stuff is important and unavoidable. After a few weeks it worked but still needs a refresh from time to time. Then I applied this method on date and time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Grizzly Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 5069 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 27 of 51 20 March 2011 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
At least one publisher seems to have realized this fact. I bought a French grammer book from www.cle-inter.com. There the page numbers are written out in words. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6703 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 28 of 51 20 March 2011 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm a little shocked to hear you say that you count the Russian number system along with the logical ones. Not only do the lower tens (10, 20, 30) have a different root word for "ten" than the upper tens (50, 60, 70, 80), two of the tens are from completely different bases (40, 90). Then there's how the numbers get declined as singular genitive when it ends in 2-4, but a plural genitive when 5-9. Plus, a few of the lowest numbers (1, 2) still have gender distinctions.... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| leeyn Newbie Joined 4998 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes | Message 29 of 51 21 March 2011 at 4:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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You would throw a person of your choice the ball. When he/she receives it, he has to yell a number in the target language calculated as the number you just said plus 3....
Buy RS GoldRunescape GoldRS Gold 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 30 of 51 21 March 2011 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Today I thought of this thread during the Latin class. Those numbers are horrible. French ones are pure logic when compared to Latin in my opinion.
17 septendecim "seven and ten" 18 duodeviginti " twenty minus two or more precisely two from twenty" 17th septimus decimus 18th duodevicesimus And this is just the beginning. I am quite unable to remember which numbers are declinable and which stay the same and when it comes to fractions and multiples, I am completely lost. In the end of the lesson, our teacher added some of the most used ancient greek numbers to it (as if we weren't confused enough already :-D). Fortunately he is very patient and willing to repeat and exercise everything with us several times. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 31 of 51 21 March 2011 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ah, no it's not the singular vs the plural, it's the paucal vs the plural. If you call it singular it makes absolutely no sense, because 4 isn't "single". "Paucal" is related to "paucity", and the French "peu" -- it means a low quantity. "Plural" is related to "plus", so it means "more". "More" than what? More than whatever else there is that is smaller, whether that's singular, dual, trial, paucal, whatever. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 32 of 51 21 March 2011 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
While it is true that one can think of 2-4 in Russian as paucal from a certain approach (it basically evolved as a way to cope for the loss of the dual), it doesn't make that much sense to downplay the fact that nouns modified by 2 to 4 take on the declensional endings of the genitive singular (or if you want to split hairs, the endings of a putative paucal quantity in modern Russian have merged with those of the genitive singular). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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