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Why are numbers so hard? | ||
Tags: Number System | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 41 of 51 23 March 2011 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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After looking through this exchange, I can't help but conclude that we're splitting hairs here while accommodating some psychological angle. The tone of the reply to Raincrowlee also set something off in me even though I haven't always seen eye-to-eye with Raincrowlee either.
No one seems to deny that in isolation, 2 to 4 are not singular quantities. However the dispute arises over the classification, labelling or interpretation of them in Russian when they're no longer in isolation. To make it clear, I have no problem on seeing 2 to 4 in Russian as paucal (or even plural). However I have no problem either on seeing 2 to 4 in Russian as (governing) genitive singular, hence being associated or even equated with singularity despite the logical inconsistency (depending on how hard one thinks about it in isolation). The descriptivist in me reports that Russian 2, 3 & 4 stand out for learners in governing genitive singular and this is corroborated by Raincrowlee's post as well as descriptions in Russian grammar books (of which I also have and checked). The descriptivist in me also reports that this apparent inconsistency as you (Cainntear) see it arose as a way to cope for the loss of the dual which in turn affected the declensions for nouns modified by 3 and 4. Learners of Russian quickly see that the endings of nouns modified by 2, 3 or 4 match those of genitive singular, and conclude that they are genitive singular - never mind some historical coincidence or putative merging of paucal with genitive singular. Basically it boils down to something like: "So the non-singular quantities of 2, 3 and 4 impose nominal declensions of a case in singular? Whatever, that's just the way it works, odd or illogical as it may be." Other languages regularly mix non-singularity with singularity, and it's debatable whether refining the descriptions to meet some measure of "logic" would be that more helpful for learners since the greater problem can be interference rather than definitions. For example I and other learners of Hungarian initially kept producing sentences where verbs and predicates modified by numerals inflected in plural because our Romance and Germanic backgrounds made us think that it was "logical" even after being told and shown explicitly on the blackboard that Hungarian doesn't do such a thing. It took practice for us to do it as Hungarians do it, not debates or thought experiments on the logical conundrum of this aspect to speakers of certain Indo-European languages (something along the lines of: "See, even if the Hungarian nouns or verbs referring to/modified by numerals past "1" are singular per the grammar, it would be "illogical" to view those numerals as singular as well." "So what? The bottom line is that you don't inflect in plural just because there's a numerical modifier of greater than 1. Usage shows that there's actually next to no practical value of thinking of Hungarian numerals beyond 1 as plurals since the concordance is to singular rather than plural.") Lastly, difficulties for Russian learners are hardly confined to declension with numerals. I have seen complaints about verbs of motion, aspect, palatalization, script, unfamiliar vocabulary for non-Slavs, declension for those not used to much inflection and mobile stress. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6700 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 42 of 51 24 March 2011 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||
Not to mention that fact, that, in reality, the grammatical term "singular" is as arbitrary as the grammatical term "gender." It's a convenient handle for people to talk about how the language is manipulated, and its accuracy is secondary to its utility. While the idea of number seems more closely tied to the underlying reality than gender does, they are both abstract frameworks that don't entirely describe the grammatical feature in question. Arguing about the proper term is something useful for specialists in the field of naming grammatical features, and doesn't shed a single ray of light on whether or not the feature is actually difficult or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ling Diglot Groupie Taiwan Joined 4584 days ago 61 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Indonesian, Thai | Message 43 of 51 21 May 2012 at 4:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Chinese must be one of the easiest languages to learn to count in. Very regular, with the exception of 2, which comes in two forms: er (used for counting an reading digits) and liang (used before nouns and higher numbers like hundred, thousand, ten-thousand).
Indonesian is also very regular, but 11-19 use "belas" (which is like English "-teen") instead of "puluh" (which is like English "ten" or "-ty"). The word for 9 (sembilan) is derived from the prefix "se-" (one), the verb "ambil" (to take), and the suffix "-an". Thai is mostly regular, but the word for 1 ("neung") is not used for 21, 31, ..., 91. In these cases, it becomes "et". Also, the word for 2 ("song") is not used for the tens place in 20-29. Here, it becomes "yi". So, instead of "son sip neung", they say "yi sip et". ("sip" means "ten"). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5054 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 44 of 51 21 May 2012 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Russian 2, 3, 4 require gen. pl. of adj. when the numbers are in the nom. or acc.
themselves, but when they (and other numbers) are in other cases, everything is put in that case. С двумя большими рогами. In the modern language it is gen. sing. In English we also have variations three dogs but three thousand. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 45 of 51 21 May 2012 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Numbers are escpecially hard because you mostly see large numbers written as numbers and not as language.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4620 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 46 of 51 21 May 2012 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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If someone is speaking a language that is not native to them and he or she has to suddenly do a bit of mental reckoning, you often hear them revert to their mother tongue as they mutter the figures out loud. I would say most people find it very hard to calculate mentally in a foreign language.
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| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5589 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 47 of 51 21 May 2012 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | ||
I've heard that. I recently read somewhere that during World War II, Gestapo agents would ask people to perform complex math problems out loud in Dutch, French, and German to make sure that they weren't British spies. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 48 of 51 21 May 2012 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | ||
It may be true, but surrounding words help. For example, as soon as I see something like "Message 45 of 47" (as in your post), I can't but see the numbers as "forty-five" and "forty-seven". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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