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enthusiast
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The posts about 40 let me think about my problems about learning English numbers: I can easily enough talk with English people BUT , if I need numbers, I am not able to understand them nor to express them , and I need paper to write them.
I read once that Marie Curie, even in her old age, having spent a great part of her life in France, still was counting in Polish when she was studying alone. It seems that numbers are more difficult to learn...does anyone share this experience?
Ciao
Emanuela
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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It seems that numbers are more difficult to learn...does anyone share this experience?As it happens, my personal experiece is the exact opposite of your problem - I find numbers easy to learn, remember and use. I find it very easy to think of numbers, and visualise them, in each of the four languges in which I have learned to count. Of those four languages, I can converse in only one, and have varying degrees of aural and written comprehension in the other three. Yet counting, and thinking numerically, is easy in all of them. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Emanuela:
I suspect it's a matter of frequency of use, though a man I worked for some years ago made a parallel remark to me once. "No matter how deeply ingrained in me they try to make the metric system, I'll never learn to think in Celsius for temperature."
Ted
TEd
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Pooh-Bah
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I have this Celsius Fahrenheit thing worked out perfectly (if slightly indefensibly). http://inspire.ospi.wednet.edu:8001/curric/weather/fahrcels.html0 degrees sounds pretty cold but 32 doesn't do anything for me so I stick to Celsius for cold weather. In the Summer I'm much more impressed by the weather being in the 90s than the 30s, so I stick to Fahrenheit. For everything else in-between, below 15 - Centigrade, above 60 - Fahrenheit, simple really! The sad thing is that I know I'm not the only one who thinks the same way. Our weather forecasts often show both, so we don't even need to do the sums. It's a bit like buying 48 inch wide fabric by the metre or 5 metre wide carpet by the yard - we do that too  ! When calculating other currencies abroad, my speciality is to get the 1-9 numbers right but to be way off the mark with the 0000s - sometimes I refuse to buy something because I think it is outrageously expensive (in Turkey recently 1,000,000 Turkish Lira = £1) or I comment on how cheap things are and find out I'm out by a factor of 10. Funny things, numbers!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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yet another perspective on numbers: I recently suffered some hearing loss (as the result of an air-bag deployment!)
and one of my biggest problems is distinguishing numbers. there is usually no context, especially with proximal numbers, which can help in guessing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Emanuela, cara, do not be concerned. There are those with English as a first language and who learn their numbers with their alphabet and they still have difficulties with numbers. Do whatever works best for you. You speak two languages, that's an accomplishment. Be happy.
Aloha, wow
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Tswum, Thank you for your post. I have had a hearing loss since childhood, now I have a reason not to be great at math.  Thank you, thank you, thank you. wow
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Carpal Tunnel
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I know how you feel emanuela.
In French the number 70 is said as “sixty and ten” (soixante et dix)
The number 80 is said as “four twenties” (quatre-vingts)
the number 90 is said as “four twenty ten” (quatre-vingt-dix)
Even though I am fluent in both English and French I invariable have to correct myself when writing down a number that someone is telling me. The worst is the70 range. Because of the rhythm of pronunciation there is a slight pause between sixty … and ten.
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
In French the number 70 is said as “sixty and ten” (soixante et dix)
The number 80 is said as “four twenties” (quatre-vingts)
I had a Belgian friend tell me once that in Belgian French, they often use "septante" and "huitante" for "soixante et dix" and "quatre vingts" - I liked that idea a lot, it made counting in French much simpler.
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Oddly, they used to pronounce it that way when my Granny was young. I don't know why they stopped. It makes so much sense to have a specific, applicable to only one number, name.
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