Cool question.
Why do we say twenty @gramatter?
AFAIK many eastern languages:
33 = Three-ten-three
65 = Six-ten-five
So sums are linguistically easier:
Three-ten + six-ten = nine-ten
Three + five = eight
= nine-ten-eight
English has lots of translation overhead.
Their sounds (source @Gladwell) are shorter too, so given a general human short-term memory native eastern-language speakers can simply deal with longer numbers.
Extrapolate too that linguistics and mathematics requires the brain to oscillate instructions across the corpus callosum (left/right).
~7 oscillations for the sum above.
Our language makes English speakers CISC in a world where many people's language is more like RISC.
Our language means we English-speakers have bigger instructions sets *and* we have to make more oscillations (to decode & recode the complexities of our language at the start & end of the operation).
Double whammy.
Worth noting that the tech-world has been steadily moving to RISC our whole lives for a reason! 🤓
I would be interested to know if there is a disparity in the incidence of #Dyslexia (heavily associated, afaik, with the capacity of one's corpus callosum) between English and Mandarin speakers...
.. but you'd have to control-out our early years education differences somehow.
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