Forty-two or two-and-forty: learning maths in different languages

Doing basic maths seems to be a pretty common thing. 2 + 2 equals 4, both in France and in China. 7 × 8 equals 56, both in the United States of America and in Germany. Although most of us use the same symbols to write down numbers (1, 2, 3, 4 ...), we use very different words for these numbers simply because we speak different languages. In this article, we will give examples of what number words in different languages look like. We also show how the way multi-digit number words are built can make learning maths and dealing with large numbers easier or more difficult.