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Maths in a foreign language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6987 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 17 of 20 31 December 2013 at 2:37am | IP Logged | ||
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FSI Basic Spanish surprised me by having a lot of arithmetic. They actually do a lot of numeric drills. For me
numbers aren't so difficult. At one point I found an algegra book in Spanish and it seemed eminently doable. I also got one of those GED Prep books (high school equivelency diploma) in Spanish and found it to be an interesting adjunct to studying. It was interesting because it was target (native) language material, but was still autodidactic in nature. That book also had a mathematic section. Best of all, it was a giant phone book sized tome and that cost about $10. Edited by luke on 31 December 2013 at 2:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3834 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 18 of 20 14 January 2014 at 12:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Some years ago, Charles Berlitz, a renowned polyglot, reported that numbers/arithmetic/mathematics were the "very last element" that he would integrate linguistically, but that he was not always successful in doing so; at least, not in every language that he spoke. He surmised that the underlying problem was that numbers do not have syntax the way that words do. That is, whether a 5 precedes a 3, or follows it, has no particular linguistic significance in itself and the language-learner cannot depend on his/her having internalized the syntax of second language to sort this out. Perhaps others would like to comment on Mr. Berlitz' theory?
My own experience leads me to agree with Mr. Berlitz, but I am not at all sure what the internalization process is. Throughout my career, my duties required that I work with numbers and perform mathematics on a daily basis. At one point, I assumed a position in a French-speaking production plant. It took me about two years to "speak numerically" with more-or-less the same rapid fluency as my French-speaking colleagues. Nonetheless, at this stage, I was fully aware that I would "see" the numbers in English and translate them virtually instantaneously into French, thereby giving myself the "aura" of being "numerically bilingual." It took me about another year before, when scanning a document, I would actually "see" the numbers in French and would no longer be translating them. So, from my own experience, working with numbers and doing mathematics is possible in a second language; however, it takes a LOT of practice for the process to become internalized. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5548 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 19 of 20 14 January 2014 at 3:08am | IP Logged | ||
Odd. If you told me to count from one to ten, I'd count from one to ten. If you told me to count from eins bis zehn, I'd count from eins bis zehn. If I don't know why you're asking me, I assume you might want to ask me for a result, and so I'd prepare it in the language used for instruction ... On the other hand, if you gave me the problem on paper, and it was something like "113 - (3+4) - (4+5) - (5+6) - ..." to count down to the lowest number above 0, then I'd probably revert to German in addition to the numerical value I 'see' in my imagination, and only read the result out in English. By the way, khanacademy is fun. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anamsc2 Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4341 days ago 85 posts - 186 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan, German Studies: French | Message 20 of 20 14 January 2014 at 4:59am | IP Logged | ||
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When I was in high school, I remember my Spanish teacher saying something like "no matter how well people learn a foreign language, they always count and do math in their native language." At that time I was quite stubborn and also bent on learning "native-level" Spanish, so I wanted to prove her wrong. For months, I did online sudoku puzzles and made sure to think the numbers in Spanish instead of in English. The end result is that now I count in my head naturally in Spanish about 50% of the time without thinking about it (the other 50% is in English, but I haven't been able to figure out a pattern). It didn't really help me get native Spanish, though. :)
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