Question to all bilinguals...

gruenchen

Hi guys, I am doing my final year thesis around counting, as in when do ppl stop counting in their native language, like if they live abroad and use a other language most of the time. I for example count in still in german when i count my loops in knitting, any suggestions/ideas/thoughts or experiences when you guys switch back to your native language when it comes to numbers or and counting?? any ideas would be appreciated thanks

Alun

Whilst I wouldn't exactly call myself bilingual, I was pretty close to that in Dutch when I lived there (for 13 years), but there were still a few areas where I reverted back to English in my head.

The first was counting to myself as you mentioned.

The second was telling the time. The Dutch use both the hour and the half-hour as reference points so for example 17.25 would be "vijf voor half zes", or five minutes before half of the sixth hour. If asked the time, I'd always struggle to work this out in my head, and just say the time in 24h format instead.

The other thing I found it hard to get my head round was when people read out numbers to me quickly. Again the Dutch usually quote telephone numbers as pairs and/or triples of digits, rather than just one digit at a time as we do. I could cope with just one two-digit number and turning it around in my head before writing it down with the attendant delay (e.g. " vijfentwintig" -> 25) but when you get a six digit phone number rattled off at you as 3 two-digit numbers in short succession, my brain melted!

I hope that helps?

gruenchen

thanks, reading the time is something I have ingored so far

Alun

Thanks, it's an interesting subject!

I remember seeing a TV documentary once where they examined the brains of bilingual people using a scanner (CT or MRI, I don't know which) while they were using each of their two languages, and they noticed that two separate parts of the brain were 'lighting up' on the scan depending on which language was being used. For people who were just very good at another language it was the same part that lit up each time, so in effect the two languages were 'sharing' the same part of the brain, whereas in bilingual people they were separated.

Now, I don't know whether numbers are dealt with in another part of the brain to language, but if that were true it would certainly explain why bilingual people have difficulty counting, telling the time etc. in their non mother tongue.

HalloweenJack

For me, it depends on the situation.

If I'm after absorbing a lot of Spanish (by watching telly, reading or talking to my Spanish friends), my brain switches to Spanish and I'd do it automatically in Spanish.

But if I'm in work (I'm an English teacher) or I have been absorbing English, I'd do it in English.

If I'm on my own, not doing anything, I'd do it in English.

Wooha

I generally count to about 12 in english and then switch back to german..
Calculations I do on the computer with bigger numbers tend to be in english, whereas calculations in my head or on paper will be in german.
I remember doing math homework with my dad (native English speaker) when i was younger and even after nearly 40 years in germany, he would revert back to english for numbers.
Funnily enough, after he moved back to ireland and spoke English all day, he would revert back to german if he was talking about anything emotional.

Heikki

My old French teacher was perfectly fluenty in English and living here for many years but said she always counted in French which was the first time I became aware of this idea