this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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Also include the list of languages you can understand.

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[–] fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

It's not like I feel superior, I feel pitty for those that didn't have the opportunity to develop more than 1 language in their infancy, it affects brain development in a major way and it definitely is easier to go from 2 to 3. Even here in Spain, I do feel that there are more english speaking people in the Basque Country (where people natively tend to know two VERY grammatically different languages by default) than the rest of Spain. Everyone learns english in school, yet I feel like we retain more? Idk, that might be naive nationalism.

Am I superior? No. Did I have a superior infancy learning process as far as languages go? Yes.

I'm fluent in Basque, Spanish and English. I sorta kinda somewhat understand most Latin languages, as most natives do.

[–] volvoxvsmarla@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I grew up with Russian and German and I cannot put it into words, but as a kid I was 100% certain that this helped me with math. It is almost like - I subconsciously knew I could approach something (like something I wanted to express) from two very different ways (two different languages), this translated to the way I approached a math problem.

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I'm pretty sure that this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_multiplication_table#The_Nine-nine_song_text_in_Chinese helped me with multiplication a lot.

Like its just easier to remember 5 syllables (七七四十九) rather than "se-ven times se-ven e-quals four-ty-nine" (10 syllabels)

They made us do rote memorization lol 💀, but I guess... it sort of worked... 🤷‍♂️

[–] fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I personally don't think 7 as "seven" or "siete" or "zazpi". 7 is 7. When learning big number combinations where you put both numbers on top and do it by 10s, I'm in numbers, not in the name of the numbers. I bet learning more than 1 language since I was a toddler enabled the flexibility to then learn the " math language" lol.

When I imagine 5x7 in my brain the answer is 35, not thirty-five (30+5), treinta y cinco(30+5) or hogei ta amabost (20+15 = 20 +10 + 5 don't ask xD).

7x7 is 47, not berhogeitazazpi (2x20+7), there's no math link between 7x7 and 2x20+7 besides that the result is the same.

[–] Smeagol666@crazypeople.online 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago

Uuuh yeah... Brain works xD. Thanks.

[–] zlatiah@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Can relate, in fact I still use Chinese for anything related to numbers because all the numbers are one-syllable 💀 (why remember "seven" whey "qi" does the same?)