Sharing a small bit of progress from today

[Tomsima]

Just wanted to share a small step forward (big step for me) from today, as its been such a massive barrier I've been pushing against for a few months now. When I read Chinese, arabic numerals ALWAYS revert to English first, and I always have to then translate the English into Chinese. Its as if they are symbols specifically wired to English sounds in my brain, so different from characters, which only have a Chinese pronounciation. If the numbers are written out using characters I have no issue at all. Anyway, I was just reading a wikipedia article in English:

"...The Eight-Nation Alliance, after being initially turned back, brought 20,000 armed troops to China, defeated the Imperial Army..."

 

and then suddenly I realised, something felt different. I had unintentionally read the above sentence as:

 

"...The Eight-Nation Alliance, after being initially turned back, brought 兩萬 armed troops to China, defeated the Imperial Army..."

 

I mean, obviously my brain is making a mistake here. But wow, not only did I see the number and hear the Chinese first and not the English, but I automatically translated twenty-thousand to two-ten-thousand (ie. 兩萬"). 

I hate interpreting bigger numbers, its so counterintuitive. So to automatically and intuitively react in this way is a big encouragement. Change is coming!

(chineseforums同學們加油!)

[Leslie Frank]

Congrats! I think that's actually huge, and portends a change for greater things to come.

 

I have in the past, relied on counting by fingers (starting with the basis of 五月 being May) to figure out that  八月 and 九月 are August and September (not sure why the months before and after 八月 and 九月, I get, no problem, without having to resort to finger counting to arrive at the English equivalent).

 

I've also finally grasped that 一萬 is 10,000, but Chinese numerical expressions beyond that still elicit some mental calculating to figure out just how many zeros come into play.

 

The thing is, for me, something like talking about a person being worth 千亿, or how many 吉字节 of storage you need, even in English, are abstract ideas that don't really do anything concrete for my brain. A line from Connor to Greg in "Succession" about 5 million dollars being inconsequential--a poor rich, so to speak, speaks to how Chinese numbers in the upper stratospheres spouted out willy nilly, especially in news reports, are just number words that my mind lazily refuses to try to calculate, just as saying Bill Gates is worth $110 billion doesn't make me think one way or another. It just is.

 

Thanks for the post, cuz now that I've written out my shortcomings, I think I no longer need to count out that 八月 and 九月 are August and September... 

[Flickserve]

On 5/17/2019 at 8:19 PM, Tomsima said:

I hate interpreting bigger numbers, its so counterintuitive. So to automatically and intuitively react in this way is a big encouragement. Change is coming!

 

If you are into buying your own property and surveying what's available, these  bigger numbers get easier really really quickly?