aurorain

I agree. It’s less about numbering system in different language and the numbers from eleven to nineteen is really just one tenth of the numbers in 0-100. It is simply that Chinese children spend much more time practicing those maths, because of many historical and culture reasons. They actually never think about any words when calculating 11 + 13, they just know the result right after they see them.

However, in terms of multiplication, the problem of English is not ..teens, but the pronounciation of numbers. Chinese or Korean has one simple syllable for each number, so only two syllable (at most 3 if you count “ten”) is needed when you shout out 32. Chinese children spend a whole year’s morning reciting multiplication table, which I could never imagine how terrible it would be if recite it in English. Therefore, every grade 3 children would shout out simple multiplication results immediately.

However, on the other hand, I believe most of the advanced mathematical concepts have nothing to do with numbers in a language.