I read the entirety of Cormac McCarthy’s All The Pretty Horses. All the way to the book’s depressing end. I know it was a literary best-seller and garnered a movie, but goodness, don’t read it if you want to finish a book with spring in your step and a happy whistle on your lips.
I switched to nonfiction, trying When Einstein Walked With Gödel by Jim Holt. It didn’t deliver a brain-cleansing escape. Barnes & Noble’s website describes it as “ . . . an entertaining and accessible guide to the most profound scientific and mathematical ideas of recent centuries.” That description may be a stretch; I suspect some readers might consider the book a cure for insomnia. Call me strange. I plowed through to the last page, and doing so activated some brain cells I thought long dead.
Portions of the book drift away from Einstein and atoms. One section examines how the structure of English affects the way American kids learn to count when compared with Chinese children. Do you realize four-year-old Chinese kids can count up to 40 at age four, while four-year-old American children do well to reach a count of 15?
Holt also cites differences among adults. Because spoken Chinese number-words tend to be shorter than English equivalents—a quarter of a second versus an average of a third of a second—length of speaking time influences how many digits we can retain in memory. Chinese speakers: nine digits, and English speakers: only seven digits. It gets worse. Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong can retain ten digits in memory.
Unimpressed? Examine the following table. Notice the short Chinese counting words and how they build one-on-another, unlike English, which requires longer unique words for numbers in the teens and above.
# English Chinese Literal Translation
1 one yî one
2 two èr two
3 three sân three
4 four sì four
5 five wŭ five
6 six liù six
7 seven qî seven
8 eight bâ eight
9 nine jiŭ nine
10ten shí ten
Now it becomes more interesting. English has individual words for 11 through 19, while Chinese uses simpler combinations from the Chinese 1 through 10 list. Don’t rush; observe how they do it.
11 eleven shíyî ten-one
12 twelve shier ten-two
13 thirteen shísân ten-three
14 fourteen shísì ten-four
15 fifteen shíwŭ ten-five
16 sixteen shíliù ten-six
17 seventeen shíqî ten-seven
18 eighteen shíbâ ten-eight
19 nineteen shíjiŭ ten-nine
At twenty and above, Chinese continues the simplistic building process. Yes, it’s similar to our system but uses short words and quickly-spoken sounds.
20 twenty èrshí two-ten
21 twenty-one èrshíyî two-ten-one
22 twenty-two èrshíèr two-ten-two
23 twenty-three èrshísân two-ten-three
The process continues .
30 thirty sânshi three-ten
31 thirty-one sânshíyî three-ten-one
32 thirty-two sânshíèr three-ten-two
33 thirty-three sânshísân three-ten-three
And so forth up to 100.
40 forty sìshí four-ten
50 fifty wŭshí five-ten
60 sixty liùshí six-ten
70 seventy qîshí seven-ten
80 eighty bâshí eight-ten
90 ninety jiŭshi nine-ten
99 ninety-nine jiŭshijiŭ nine-ten-nine
100 one hundred yìbãi one-hundred
1000 one thousand yìqiân one-thousand
In addition to (pun intended) simple counting, allow me to point out another numerical convention in which we could improve: our American weights and measures system. Of the world’s two-hundred plus nations, only three do not use the metric system. They are the West African country of Liberia (famous as nineteenth century colonization destination for ex-American and Caribbean slaves), Myanmar (formally called Burma and recently known for internal strife involving its Rohingya minority), and of course, the U.S.A.
The metric system is much simpler than our English system. No fractions and no quaint, outdated terms. In the metric system, only the following units occur:
1. Length: meter
2. Area: square meter (are)
3. Volume: cubic meter (liter)
4. Mass: gram (metric ton)
5. Force: newton
6. Pressure: pascal
7. Energy: joule
8. Power: watt
9. Temperature: kelvin (degrees Celsius)
Just consider length. In the American system, we cite inch, foot, yard, mile, fathom, rod, furlong, league, mil, pole, perch, hand, link, and chain. When specifying length, we labor with whole numbers and fractional values. Take a board of a random length, let’s say, 5 feet 4 and 3/8 inches. Adding that measurement to another board of random length can become time-consuming and prone to error. In the metric system, that length could be expressed as a whole number and decimal.
The metric system’s advantage holds true throughout the nine measurement categories listed above: nine terms to learn versus more than fifty in the English system. Look at the list of units we use to measure volume: gallon, liquid quart, dry quart, liquid pint, dry pint, fluid ounce, teaspoon, tablespoon, minim, fluid dram, gill, peck, bushel, cubic inch, cubic foot, cubic yard, cubic fathom, cubic rod, cubic furlong, cubic mile, cubic league, cubic mil, cubic pole, cubic perch, cubic hand, cubic link, and cubic chain.
It’s enough to cause a headache, and we’re too hidebound to accept change. We grumble about learning to negotiate traffic circles. Perhaps making ourselves more competitive by improving our counting or measurement systems is beyond our ken. And in spite of that, people want to move here. It must be for our craft beer. I bet the brewmeisters understand the metric system.
The End
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