For polyglots, there's something special about their native tongue

Re:For polyglots, there's something special about their nati... by pcthrowaway on Tuesday March 12, 2024 @03:05PM (#39683491)

(as a native English speaker who has spent some time in India) I have such a hard time thinking of numbers in terms of Lakh and Crore, I find even if I can remember the number of decimal places represented by each one, I almost have to visualize the number and move the commas in my mind to be able to make sense of them.

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Re:For polyglots, there's something special about their nati... by dotnet00 on Tuesday March 12, 2024 @03:35PM (#39683916)

Similarly the only knowledge I've pretty much entirely forgotten about Hindi is the way the digits are written. Even going years without reading or writing in Hindi, the muscle memory comes back pretty much immediately for everything except for the digits.

Technically Hindi would be my mother tongue, but I wonder how all that plays out in terms of having initially been raised with it, then having entirely forgotten it and replaced with native level English for a few years, and then having relearned Hindi from scratch. I tend to think in a mix of both languages, and have a tendency to mix words from other languages into my thoughts too if I'm exposed to them often, even if I can barely speak those languages.

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Re:For polyglots, there's something special about their nati... by dheera on Tuesday March 12, 2024 @05:02PM (#39684915)

Chinese also splits numbers differently than English. In Chinese it's every 4 digits, instead of every 3 digits as in English. There is a word for 1e4 (萬), 1e5 is 10萬, 1e6 is 100萬, 1e7 is 1000萬, and there is a word again for 1e8 (億).

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Re:For polyglots, there's something special about their nati... by nh23423fefe on Thursday March 14, 2024 @02:42PM (#39707487)

same for japan. ju hyaku sen man

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