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Maths in a foreign language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4410 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 20 03 December 2013 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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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. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4146 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 2 of 20 03 December 2013 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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You are right. I can't do it!
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| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4022 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 3 of 20 03 December 2013 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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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 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4495 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 4 of 20 03 December 2013 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I did maths and physics in English more often than in Dutch
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| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4410 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 5 of 20 03 December 2013 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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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 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4495 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 6 of 20 03 December 2013 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5320 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 20 03 December 2013 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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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. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4157 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 8 of 20 03 December 2013 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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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 1 person has voted this message useful |
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