One language, two number-word systems and many problems: Numerical cognition in the Czech language

Comparing numerical performance between different languages does not only mean comparing different number-word systems, but also implies a comparison of differences regarding culture or educational systems. The Czech language provides the remarkable opportunity to disentangle this confound as there exist two different number-word systems within the same language: for instance, “25” can be either coded in non-inverted order “dvadsetpät” [twenty-five] or in inverted order “pätadvadset” [five-and-twenty].To investigate the influence of the number-word system on basic numerical processing within one culture, 7-year-old Czech-speaking children had to perform a transcoding task (i.e., writing Arabic numbers to dictation) in both number-word systems.The observed error pattern clearly indicated that the structure of the number-word system determined transcoding performance reliably: In the inverted number-word system about half of all errors were inversion-related. In contrast, hardly any inversion-related errors occurred in the non-inverted number-word system.We conclude that the development of numerical cognition does not only depend on cultural or educational differences, but is indeed related to the structure and transparency of a given number-word system.

► Influence of number-word system transcoding performance
► Inverted and non-inverted number words in Czech
► More inversion errors for inverted number words
► Language differences due to structure and transparency of a number-word systems