Being able to speak a language is they key to understanding numbers, scientists have discovered. A research project found that deaf people who had not learned a language containing symbols used for counting were unable to comprehend any number greater than three. Experts said the reason was that they had not studied the familiar ‘count list’ of one to ten that most people are taught when they are young。

　　有科学家经过研究后发现，语言能力高的人对数字的敏感度也很高，在实验中科学家发现，失聪的人没有掌握关于“数字语言”情况下，认识的数字不超过3个。专家分析，他们对数字不敏感的主要原因在于这些失聪的人在年幼的时候没有学会怎样数数(1--10)，专家总结到：数字与语言能力有着重大联系。

　　Children learn such a sequence even before they know what it means and it stays hardwired into their brain for the rest of their lives. The study is the first to identify the link between language and numeracy and was carried out by researchers at the University of Chicago. They studied deaf people from Nicaragua who had created their own unique sign language to talk to one another. These so-called ‘homesigners’ did have numbers in their culture including a monetary system, so any differences they exhibited would have to solely be due to language. The first test involved asking them to answer which had the most value out of a 10-unit, 20-unit and 100-unit coin。

　　因为，儿童在最年幼的时候学习“数数”时，也就是从1数到10，他们只是按照顺序一个一个数下来，并不知道这些数字所表示的意义。然而，这些数字好比硬性数据一样存储到他们的“大脑硬盘”中让他们在生活中发挥作用。据悉，这个关于数字与语言的联系方面的研究是由芝加哥大学的研究人员牵头的。科学家对来自 Nicaragua 的聋哑人做研究时发现，他们也有他们自己的

　　“金融系统”。他们用他们自己特色的手语来表达数字时，只要用语言来表达，他们可以正确分辨出不同纸币的大小。然而当要求他们用语言来表达更深层次的涵盖有数字的故事时，他们因手语难表达的原因，数字越大，表达起来越费劲。

　　Susan Goldin-Meadow, a professor in psychology at Chicago University, said: ‘It's not just the vocabulary words that matter, but understanding the relationships that underlie the words - the fact that "eight" is one more than "seven" and one less than "nine".‘Without having a set of number words to guide them, deaf homesigners in the study failed to understand that numbers build on each other in value.’

　　来自芝加哥大学的心理学家Susan Goldin-Meadow说：“语言表达能力强，对数字的领悟能力更强是一方面，然而，能够不仅能够说，而且倘若还能理解到数字下更深层次的含义，语言表达能力会更强。”