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A personal experience: when I have to remember or tell numbers in English, they always come into my mind first as Chinese, making it harder to use numbers in En
by schuke 8y ago
A personal experience: when I have to remember or tell numbers in English, they always come into my mind first as Chinese, making it harder to use numbers in English.
When I just started living in England, every time I have to tell someone my phone number, it was either a translation from my mental number in Chinese into English, or, a deliberate suppression of my instinct to speak or use Chinese while saying it in English.
On the other hand, if it's something without any obvious Chinese equivalent, it comes very naturally in English. For example, Marmite.
- seszett 8y agoIt's still the same for me with numbers, any numbers always just come up in French even if I'm speaking another language. The first time I had to give a Canadian phone number in English, I just tried to translate it and I had no idea how people could say numbers like "five hundred and fourteen, two hundred fifty-seven, two thousands four hundred and fifty-five". It flows quite well in French. Well, the guy at the other end stopped me and told me that in English they don't bother and just say the numbers one by one.
- Uberphallus 8y agoFrench numbers come naturally to me, up to 69, then my brain slows down. Like for any foreign speaker, I assume. For those who don't know French, 70 is "sixty ten" all the way to "sixty nineteen" at 79, then from 80 to 99 "four twenties" to "four twenties nineteen". Another effect is that my French phone number comes out naturally in French, same for all the phone numbers of all the countries I've had a phone in.
- seszett 8y agoYou could use the Belgian and Swiss way to say 70 and 90: septante and nonante. They work just like the other -ante numbers, 79 is just septante-neuf, 99 nonante-neuf. It's a bit weird at first for French people, but easy to understand and much easier for you to use. 80 is huitante in some places in Switzerland, it's much less common (and many people expect "octante" instead, which is even less common) but people would still understand.
- tom_mellior 8y agoProducing the numbers is the easier part. Not losing the thread of the conversation when someone else tells you something about sixty-thirteen is the hard part.