I don't know, even if this effect exists, its weight on the overall math performance is really weak, there many other factors at play. Just compare the PISA res

I don't know, even if this effect exists, its weight on the overall math performance is really weak, there many other factors at play. Just compare the PISA results [1] of countries that use the same language: FRENCH France: 495 Switzerland: 531 Luxembourg[2]: 490 SPANISH Spain: 484 Chile: 423 Mexico: 413 Peru: 368 PORTUGUESE Portugal: 487 Brazil: 391 This is just a personal anecdote, but I have studied maths in 3 different languages: Basque (with a counting system similar to the French), Spanish and English. And I can't really say that I felt more comfortable using one or the other, but the three use pretty similar systems though. [1] http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overv... [2] At secondary school, in general, until the 9th class every subject is in German, except mathematics and sciences (in French) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism_in_Luxembourg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism_in_Luxembourg