language difficulties

[deird_lj]

I'd forgotten how hard it is to translate maths into European.


I just had a meeting about lots of engineering stuff, with 5 Australians and 3 Europeans. And it really brought back memories of my three month stint in Germany, when I suddenly went from being brilliant at maths to absolutely appalling.

Reason being, people who say that "maths is a universal language" are completely incorrect.

Take the following sum:

27,004.3+7=27,011.3

Imagine that I've just written that, in my very best handwriting, on a whiteboard.

Now, for Australians, that sum would be correct.
However, was it written by someone from continental Europe, in their very best handwriting, the sum would be more like this:

27,004.3+7=64,072

Same sum, two completely different answers. And both are entirely correct - as long as we're talking handwriting, and not typing.

You see, a European "1" looks almost exactly the same as an Australian "7". Plus, they use "," for the decimal point, whereas we use it for marking a thousand ("1,000" would be one thousand).
And our decimal point, ".", is their multiplication sign.

So, in my example sum, I would read 27,004.3 as "twenty-seven thousand and four, point 3".
Whereas a European would look at the exact same handwritten number, and read it as "twenty-one, point zero zero four, multiplied by three".

This gets quite confusing. Especially when you're not quite fluent in each other's languages, and you're trying to use diagrams with numbers as a shortcut for simple translation...

Comments

[taiba.livejournal.com]

My 7s always have a line through them, and my 1s have a very big hooky bit. I'm very European in that respect.

I use the Australian decimal point, and I use the dod as a multiplication sign occasionally though I place it higher than the decimal would be.

I'm trying to get the best of both worlds :-p

[deird1]

How odd...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_sabik_/]

Yeah, the multiplication dot is supposed to be higher than a period, isn't it — "⋅", the same dot as in "dot product". Still, in handwriting it's probably indistinct, and on a typewriter or computer one would tend to just use the period when in a hurry. In addition, the decimal point can also be raised...

η

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

But presumably only continental Europe - Brits use a straight line for a 1,7 for seven, and a . for the decimal place - so your first looks right to me, and the second all wrong...

Which is why - when my dentist, who is Polish, sent me a change of appointment letter I nearly put it on the 7th on my calendar because of the long hooky line on his number 1...

[deird1]

I thought it was probably just continental Europe... but I wasn't entirely certain.

Aren't the 1's confusing?

[immer-am-lesen.livejournal.com]

My Oma, as well as writing her ones like big hooks, and sevens with a stroke through them, used to put a dash across the top of her...erm...'n's, or 'u's, I forget. So you could tell them apart, 'cause they looked identical...
My mum multiplies in French, and it's the most hilarious-looking thing ever. The method is crazily different to ours here!