Language Trainers Blog

I was having a full body massage the other day (yes, lucky me!), and, as it tends to do, my mind started wandering.  I thought about things I wanted to blog about, and then I started thinking of the translations for body parts that were being worked on.  I couldn’t remember the word for ‘ankle’, but I realised that this was a good way to pass the time in a way that’s still not very stressful on your mind.

So, for any time that you would otherwise be letting your mind wander (at the hairdresser, on the bus, waiting in any kind of queue), try to focus on some learning revision.  Some examples of things to do:

1. Name as many items, colours, occupations, locations around you as possible.
2. Make up sentences about people or situations around you (e.g. ‘That woman is wearing a yellow skirt’).
3. Count the seconds as they go by.
4. Narrate your actions in your head (e.g. ‘Now I’m walking towards the ATM. Now I’m getting my wallet out of my bag.’).
5. Note down any vocabulary you don’t remember or know.  Look them up the next chance you can.

Can you think of any other ways you can keep your mind occupied with language practice?

You’d think that the word ‘billion’ would mean the same to all English speakers, but, in fact, the two different meanings of the word are vastly different – 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 (one thousand million and one million million).  The first is the current ‘global’ understanding of the word (using the short scale, sometimes known as American usage), and the second, much larger number, uses the long scale or British usage.  As the numbers get bigger, the difference between them gets larger, as the short scale increases by thousands (e.g. a trillion is a thousand billions, or 10¹²), and the long scale increases by millions (e.g. a trillion is a million (long scale) billions, or 10¹⁸).

Most countries use the short scale, these days, but many still use the long scale.  Some countries, such as France and England, have used both scales at different times in history, so it’s important to check sources if you ever come across billion, trillion, etc in older publications.

The French word billion, German Billion; Dutch biljoen; Swedish biljon; Finnish biljoona; Danish billion; Spanish billón and the Portuguese word bilião all refer to 10¹², being long scale terms. Therefore, each of these words translates to the modern English word: “trillion” (10¹² in the short scale), and not “billion” (10⁹ in the short scale).

On the other hand, the Brazilian Portuguese word bilhão (note the alternate spelling to the European Portuguese variant) and the Welsh word biliwn both refer to 10⁹, being short scale terms. Each of these words translates to the English word “billion” (10⁹ in the short scale).  [Wikipedia.]

I think the best thing to do if you have to communicate in such large numbers is just to use the numerals instead of the words!

I mentioned a while ago an Amazonian tribe who had no words for cardinal numbers (1, 2, 3 …).  Even though they had no words for individual numbers, they fared quite well with matching same-sized groups of objects.

A different study has found that children from two different indigenous communities in outback Australia, who also have no words or gestures for numbers, do as well in basic numeracy tests than English-speaking Aboriginal children living in Melbourne.  The children who don’t have words for numbers still hold quite strong concepts of quantity and spatial awareness, which could easily be built upon, say the researchers.

This backs up the idea that humans have a natural idea of numbers, regardless of culture, language, and training.  This has implications for people who have trouble with basic numeracy skills, in that the root of the problem may lie somewhere other than in failed education.

Full article here.

One last thing on numbers, for now.

Forget about base 10 and counting in lots of 10,000.  Think back to when you were a child.  One of the first things you were taught was probably how to count from 1 to 10.  It’s always one of the first things I learn in a foreign language as well.  The concept of numbers and counting seems to be essential to most cultures.

In 2004, a team from MIT discovered that an Amazonian tribe had no words for specific numbers.  What they thought were words meaning ‘one’, ‘two’, and ‘many’, have recently been shown to mean something else.  This time, instead of asking the Piraha tribespeople to count objects as they were added (one, two, three…), they were asked to count backwards as objects were removed from the group.  It seems that the words thought to mean ‘one’, ‘two’, and ‘many’ were general terms, and had more to do with relative amounts. What they thought was ‘two’ could actually mean as many as five or six (and obviously sometimes two), ‘one’ was anything less than ‘two’, and ‘many’ was anything more.

Even though the Piraha don’t even have a number to describe ‘one’, they could still match identical-sized groups.  However, in memory-matching games, they didn’t do so well.   So apparently humans don’t need cardinal numbers (we do have an innate concept of ‘amount’), but it does really help us with keeping track of groups of things over time.  It’s a little easier than checking your bank account and finding out that you have ‘less money than you did yesterday’.  Although either way is still not very comforting.

The other day I was talking about the misunderstanding that arose between a culture that counted in thousands, and a culture that counted in tens of thousands.  Does it make it even more difficult when people use a different base system than we’re used to?

Most cultures these days count in a base 10 system, most likely because we have five digits on each hand to keep track of the world with.   This means we count up to ten, remember that we have one lot of ten, keep counting to twenty, remember we have two lots of ten, etc.  Do you think you’d have trouble with bases 2, 5, 8, 12, 20, or even 60?  You might surprise yourself.

Base 2 (binary) is used primarily in computer-related fields, and relates to switches that can only be in the on or off position (1 or 0).

Base 5 has been used in many cultures (probably because we have five digits on one hand), and can be used as a sub-base for base 10, 20, or 60.

Base 8 is a counting system based on the gaps between fingers, and is used by the Yuki tribe of northern California (who also use 4 as a sub-base).  There is a theory that the Proto-Indo Europeans in the Bronze age used a counting system based on eights.  The word for nine, ‘newm’, is thought to have derived from ‘new’, and suggests to some linguists that nine and ten were, at some point, new numbers.

Base 12 is thought to have been related to the number of knuckles on one hand (not counting the thumb).  We still have words for twelve (one dozen) and twelve twelves (one gross).  We have two lots of twelve hours in a day, and twelve months in a year.  Twelve is not quite as easy to multiply, but simpler to divide in than base 10.

Base 20 is possibly based on the number of human fingers and toes, and was used by the Mayan civilisation and others in South America, and in some parts of Africa.  In English we still have the word ‘score’ (twenty), and in French there is ‘vingt’.  Eighty in French is ‘quatre-vingt’ (four twenties).  There is also evidence of base 20 in Irish and Danish counting systems.

Base 60 is thought to have been a combination of bases 10 and 12, and was used by ancient Mesopotamian cultures, as well as the Chinese.  As a result of the Sumerian usage, we still use base 60 to measure time and angles, with 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour.  The Chinese calendar has 6 cycles of 60 days in one year, and the Chinese Zodiac has four cycles of 12 (lasting 60 years).

I recently watched an exchange between a native English speaker and a small town Cantonese woman.

The English speaker wanted to express how much a piece of property in her home country was ($180,000), and said “yāt baak baat sahp chīn mān” (one hundred eighty thousand dollars).  The Chinese woman didn’t understand this at all, even after several repetitions (with reasonable pronunciation).

The English speaker didn’t realise that in Cantonese, after you reach 10,000 (yāt maahn), you begin counting in lots of ten thousand.  Thus, the price of the house should have been “sahp baat maahn mān” (eighteen ten thousand dollars).

There is no singular term for ‘million’, and the Cantonese count in units of ten thousand until they get to 100 million, which is called “yīk”.

1 = yāt
10 = yāt sahp
100 = yāt baak
1,000 = yāt chīn
10,000 = yāt maahn
100,000 = sahp maahn (ten ten thousand)
1,000,000 = yāt baak maahn (one hundred ten thousand)
10,000,000 = yāt chīn maahn (one thousand ten thousand)
100,000,000 = yāt yīk (one ten million)

It’s not too confusing once you know how it works, but it is still yet another thing to get your head around when you’re in a new culture.

More on counting later…