Need an Excuse for Bad Math?

A long long long long time is my best guess.
Hmm, you could use their language to gain insight to how all human language once was, and see if there is a way to track the development of language along with change in culture and enviroment, and such. Damn, maybe i should have done some linguistics at Uni after all.

When i saw this i immediately thought" there is no excuse for bad math,its the same in all countries". Well i guess not.

Different languages represent numbers differently, and some may well do it slightly better than others.
There are differences in the standard fo results between Welsh language schools and English languages schools in Wales because of this:
Read here for a little more on that.

Hmm, well a few artificial languages have been invented with that in mind, of which Esperanto is perhaps the most well known.

Not quite sure what you meant about Welsh there, as there are two main Welsh dialects, North and South, and speakers of the two like to argue with each other which is better

But languages diverge with geography, even today. Just look at the Differences between Austrailan, British, and American English.
They are somewhat different from each other, and, whilst in the same overall language, are seperate for reasons of both culture and geography. Lets take mass media, Television, most TV programmes in the UK are British, with some of the more popular American ones and a few crappy (i'm sorry for those downunder) Austrailain soaps, so most of the language patterns, accents, local vernacular etc. present on the box, are British, so the exposure is primarily one of British English.
Same is true here for the US and Australia.
The same reason why Geordies (from Newcastle, N. England) have slightly different accents and vernacular ro Brommies (people from Birmingham), again, because on a day to day basis, people from Newcastle tend to talk to other people from Newcastle, not even migration changes this, as with in 2-3 generations, they've picked up the local accent and vernacular.

So as soon as you have created a universal language and taught the whole planet, so long as those people, for the most part of thier lives, chat to their neighbours etc, then over time you will get divergence, at best you can hope to slow it down, keep it to a minimal etc.
So it seems almost like a futile task in a way.

Edit:
Hmm, wait, you meant a universal language for learning or something, so as to learn maths efficiently and what not right?
Well in that case, ignore the above


Edited by Cywr

Shoot, I never thought tribes from my own country had that complex language...

thanx Cywr for the share

Originally posted by Cywr There are differences in the standard fo results between Welsh language schools and English languages schools in Wales because of this: Read here for a little more on that.

This is really interesting:

For example, the numbers 12, 20 and 23 are represented in Welsh by the more transparent number terms un deg dau ('one ten two'), dau ddeg ('two tens') and dau ddeg tri ('two tens three').

Makes so much sense than saying twelve, twenty and twenty three. Twenty and twenty three are within logical limits but what is eleven? Twelve? Still, better than French where you have to say fourt-twenty for eighty and four-twenty-ten for ninety!

This is from someone who speaks manderin and taiwanese (aka holo chinese), the Welsh numbering system is exactly the same as the Chinese system.  The Japanese and Korean has also adopted the same numbering systems.  However, if language is the cause why some group of people are better at math than someothers, then maybe we should compare those who speaks English and those who speaks German.  Because German's einundzwanzig (One and Twenty) to me is much more difficult to understand than twenty one.

Perhaps language can also make some people better at algebra than others?

By the way, I was wondering if you do speak Welsh yourself Cywr? Extremely interesting language, I even tried learning it by myself. Remember a few words like Shumei and Creuso which I'm sure I've misspelled anyway. 

It's also interesting to see where the original words for numbers stop, and composite words start to appear. For example, in English, Dutch and German the composite words start at thirteen, while in French, they start at seventeen (dix-sept).

Just a shame I can't count that far in any other languages. I think the results would be quite interesting.

The French count in twenties.
Danish does this too, and old welsh did too, a few other languages do it.
Though it may initialy sound wierd, renember, we have 20 digits