[9급 국가직 영어 2013년 17번]

Look at the following list of numbers: 4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6. Read them out loud and memorize that sequence. If you speak English, you have about a 50 percent chance of remembering that perfectly. If you're Chinese, though, you're almost certain to get it right every time. This is because pronouncing them in Chinese takes shorter time. In addition, the number－naming systems are in Western and Asian languages. In English, for example, they say fourteen and sixteen, so one might expect that they would also say oneteen and twoteen. But they don't. The number system in English is irregular. In contrast, Asians have logical counting systems. Those differences mean that Asian children learn to count much faster and perform basic functions better than Western children.

Being good at ㉠ may be rooted in the different ㉡ systems.