On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 10:03 AM, Wang Xuerui
<idontknw.wang@gmail.com> wrote:
2012/3/3 Sebastian Fröjd <so.cool.ogi@gmail.com>:
> I've been trying to find the reference of what I've been reading, but I
> haven't found it yet. From what I remember, it was something about chinese
> count like eight-nine-ten-tenone-tentwo etc, instead of the illogical
> eleven-twelve etc. So that could be the cause why chinese children grasp the
> base-10 position system earlier. Unfortunately I have no reference to this
> research at the moment. But maybe this could be a start?:
>
Chinese numeral expressions are mostly regular... in the "ten-one,
ten-two" situation the leading "one"s are omitted, and for large
numbers it is sometimes acceptable to just say the individual digits;
i remember having said something like "the file size is five four
three two eight zero six bytes" for my classmate to verify the
transferred data.
That sounds pretty normal to me. It's like 'spelling' a number to verify it. Phone numbers are read the same way.
stevo
And ordinals are formed by simply prefixing
cardinals.
Maybe the irregularities lie in alternative counting symbols like the
ancient Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches... actually not many
Chinese people can enumerate all of the characters, let alone writing
down them :P