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Comment by oefrha | Hacker News Reader

I think one good test of the counting-friendliness of a language is reciting the digits of pi (the limitation is obvious: only single digits are considered).

Among the few languages I know, I can easily recite the first twenty digits after the decimal point in Mandarin within three seconds. In English it’s just painful, at least for me.

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Uh... isn't that just because all digits in Chinese are monosyllabic? Doesn't really have much to do with the way the number is conceptualized.

Given that children (and some adults) verbalize thoughts in their minds, being able to speak something faster is an advantage. It also makes memorization easier. Take the multiplication table as an example.

By the way, digits are almost monosyllabic in English too (with the exception of seven) but not even remotely as nice.

Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious - do you have a way of remembering them? Otherwise they're all just single digits regardless of language.

I never made a special effort for that and I only remember 12 of those digits, so maybe I'm just using an inefficient way, but I remember them as two-digit numbers, not single digits.

I don't think I'm alone, the basic value of pi one learns in France is "3 14 16" - "trois quatorze seize" (historically it was "trois quatorze-cent-seize" so "3 1416" but it's less used today).

I believe the basic number taught in Mandarin is 3.1415926, which fits in one second.

> Otherwise they're all just single digits regardless of language.

You mean single syllables? All syllables are definitely not created equal, some are harder to pronounce than others, and some don’t combine nicely when pronounced side by side.

> do you have a way of remembering them?

I do, but that’s beside the point. s/reciting/reading out loud/ if you wish.

Edit: I see the confusion now. I didn’t mean “remembering” within three seconds, that would be insane for most people.

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