"Numbers are the most basic in one's life, being used all the time, yet the most difficult to master in a foreign language." This was what a visiting scholar from mainland China said to me in the 1980s.
I'm only using a small handful of examples, for illustrating my point, otherwise it'll be too long a blog.
- one / 一 (yī)
- two / 二 (èr)
- three / 三 (sān)
- four / 四 (sì)
- five / 五 (wǔ)
- six / 六 (liù)
- seven / 七 (qī)
- eight / 八 (bā)
- nine / 九 (jiǔ)
- ten / 十 (shí)
- eleven / 十一 (shí yī / "ten one")
- twelve / 十二 (shí èr / "ten two")
- thirteen / 十三 (shí sān / "ten three")
- fourteen / 十四 (shí sì / "ten four")
- fifteen / 十五 (shí wǔ / "ten five')
- sixteen / 十六 (shí liù / "ten six")
- seventeen / 十七 (shí qī / "ten seven")
- eighteen / 十八 (shí bā / "ten eight")
- nineteen / 十九 (shí jiǔ / "ten nine")
- twenty / 二十 (èr shí / "two ten")
- thirty / 三十 (sān shí / "three ten")
- forty / 四十 (sì shí / "four ten")
- fifty / 五十 (wǔ shí / "five ten")
- sixty / 六十 (liù shí / "six ten")
- seventy / 七十 (qī shí / "seven ten")
- eighty / 八十 (bā shí / "eight ten")
- ninety / 九十 (jiǔ shí / "nine ten")
Inconsistencies in the English numbers (not in any order of importance),
- 11 (eleven) and 12 (twelve) are not identifiable as being related (to each other, nor to 13–19 which all have the common suffix "teen"); 13 to 19 are identifiable as being related to each other, with the suffix "teen" applied to all of them
- 13 does not keep its base "three" (coming out as thirteen, not threeteen); 14 does (fourteen), but not 15 (fifteen, instead of fiveteen), yet 16, 17 and 19 do (sixteen, seventeen, nineteen), with 18 sort of conforming, yet not (losing a "t", i.e., not "eightteen")
- 20–90 are consistent in all having suffix "ty", but 20, 30, 40, 50 have not kept their base (twoty, threety, fourty, fivety), yet 60 (sixty), 70 (seventy), 80 (eighty) and 90 (ninety) have (except for 80, losing one "t", becoming "eighty", not "eightty")
As you can see, English numbers are quite a higgledy-piggledy bunch, making life hard for the learner.
The Chinese language is consistent, just going by the positioning of the single digits. That's it. No inconsistency as in English, with "twelve instead of twoteen for 12, thirteen instead of threeteen for 13, yet fourteen for 14, but then fifteen instead of fiveteen for 15, etc". The English set requires the learner to memorise the individual items, with no logic / pattern for predicting how they might/should be, and for when s/he forgets later and needs to rebuild.
The Chinese way might be very logical and user-friendly to me, yet a student of mine, who'd started learning Chinese 30+ years ago, and is still learning it (not continuously all these decades, though), said she has difficulty processing 十二 shí èr / "ten two" for 12, and 二十 èr shí / "two ten" for 20 -- both for passive decoding (when hearing the two sounds) and for active production (of the two sounds in speech).
Don't know if it's age (she's in her 80s), or if she's always had trouble on this front. Most people have blind spots with various things in life, not just language learning, e.g., left vs right (a very common weakness from what I've seen). (Will have to ask her.)
I'm not complaining about English numbers (being all over the place) on my own behalf, because during my school days (and in my culture), one mostly just memorised (still does, maybe?) without demurring. Good teachers would devise mnemonics for the student, like my geography teacher breaking up Mississippi into four separate sounds, "miss is sip pi", to help us get all the letters accounted for, and chemistry teacher Sister Dominic with "ka na cal mag al zinc fe con ni stan plumb" for the periodic table of chemical elements -- both of which I remember to this day, some six decades on.
I'm sure there's some historical / linguistic explanation for numbers in English being the way they are presented (e.g., that it's the way it's done in Latin or Greek or something), but this blog is only a very superficial (and a bit fun / tongue-in-cheek) dip into how the Chinese language is not as difficult for the learner as people think -- that there are some learner-friendly aspects too. So, I won't be delving into the roots for why/how numbers in English have turned out the way they have.
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