Counting Is Not Equally Easy in Every Language

Counting is not equally easy in every language. Some number systems are highly regular, and Mandarin Chinese is one of them: the words for numbers after ten follow the underlying base-10 structure closely, so eleven is expressed as “ten-one,” twelve as “ten-two,” and so on. Which means the counting words a child learns can carry more or less of the arithmetic on their surface — the same quantities, differently packaged.