Among all the tangled ways of German that I knew would trip me up this summer, I never expected so much trouble from stuff I learned in German 1. Namely, the numbers. Somehow after spending a third of my life practicing, I still get confused by the idea that Germans say "fourandseventy" instead of "seventy-four." It's not a problem when I'm speaking, but it definitely comes up when I'm listening to something fast enough to prevent reflection. I'm really a major fan of processing numbers left-to-right.
One area where I notice it all the time is at work. Since I'm constantly typing numbers in one place that I saw in another, it makes it easier if I say the number in my head. But if I say it in German, I have to treat it as a list of one-digit numbers. (ex. one-three-nine-eight vs. one thousand, three hundred eight and ninety.) Otherwise it takes me about three times as long. Even with the one-digit method, saying it in English is definitely faster, even though I've known German numbers since early childhood. This observation ties in nicely with linguists' findings that second-language use takes up a lot of short-term memory: even when you know the words well, you're still more likely to forget the content that they expressed.
Of course, another major reason for aggravation with numbers has to do with units. Much of it could have been avoided if the US had shown common sense a few decades back and switched to the metric system. As it is, I haven't dealt with it much in the US since 11th-grade chemistry class. I'm now quite comfortable with Celsius temperatures (in the range I've experienced), and I'm OK with kilometers and increasingly with grams. But when people compare their height in centimeters, or apartment area in square meters, or monthly salaries in Euros, it takes me a little while to catch up. At least metric is logical - I pity the poor internationals who come to the US and have to tackle the English system. (Side bar: it was an odd feeling with my international classmates when I translated a dollar amount to Euros, only to realize that they were more familiar with dollars. Only two of them, among 14, use Euros at home.) Even when the German is not an issue, I'm working on a new language.
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I've had the same problems with numbers while learning both Mandarin and Spanish. For some reason, they are obstinately fixed in my mind to the English equivalents, despite (in the case of Spanish) spending a semester speaking almost pure Spanish.
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