Take a look at the following list of numbers: 4,8,5,3,9,7,6. read them out loud. Now look away and spend twenty seconds memorizing that sequence before saying them out loud again. If you speak English, you have a 50% of chance of remembering that sequence perfectly (if you speak Spanish you have even less chance, I’ll explain later). If you’re Chinese, though, you’re almost certain to get it right every time. Why is that? Because as human beings we store digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds. We most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within that two-second span. And Chinese speakers get that list of numbers right almost every time because, unlike English, their language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds.

This is the reason why telephone numbers are separated by dashes 617-407-2394. You would never be able to remember a phone number by remembering all the digits at once.

Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be uttered in less than one-quarter of a second (4 is “si” and 7 is “qi”). Their English equivalents -“four”, “seven” -are longer. In Spanish is even worse, they are even longer “siete” and “cuatro”. The longer the word, the less time one has to remember the other digits.

The numbering system is also different. Asian countries have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten-one. Twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two-tens-four and so on. Asian children lear to count much faster than any other children.

The regularity of their number system also means that Asian children can perform basic functions, such as addition, far more easily.  English-speaking children have to convert words to numbers to do the math. For Asian children, the mathematical operation is embedded in the sentence. For example: 37 + 22. Thirty seven plus twenty two. English speaker have to do 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. However, to do that mentally, you have to convert the words to numbers, and keep the words AND numbers in memory -which is difficult to do because they are long. For Asian children is directly three-tens-seven and two-tens-two. The addition is right there embedded: It’s five-tens-nine.

Extracts taken from Malcom Gladwell Outliers Book (p. 227-228)

Let’s start learning Chinese. Grab your fortune cookies!!!