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In one study, first-grade children were asked to represent numbers like 42 using blocks of tens and units. For example, children who count in East Asian languages may have a better understanding of the base-10 system. There’s growing evidence that the transparency of a counting system can affect the way we process numbers. Psychologists call systems like these “transparent”, where there is an obvious and consistent link between numbers and their names. Japanese and Korean also use similar conventions, where larger numbers are created by compounding the names for smaller ones. Here, 92 is written jiǔ shí èr, which translates as “nine ten two”.
![numbers in different languages numerals numbers in different languages numerals](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/W8eGQWloXB8/maxresdefault.jpg)
And in Danish, the word for 92 is tooghalvfems, where halvfems, meaning 90,is an abbreviation of the Old Norse word halvfemsindstyve, or “four and a half times twenty”.Īnd in English, words like “twelve” or “eleven” don’t give many clues as to the structure of the number itself (these names actually come from the Old Saxon words ellevan and twelif, meaning “one left” and “two left”, after 10 has been subtracted).Ĭontrast this with Mandarin Chinese, where the relationship between the tens and the units is very clear.