This is bullshit. The first example with memorizing the numbers doesn't work with Japanese - "hachi, ni, yon, roku, shichi, go, ichi" isn't faster than "eight, two, four, six, seven, five, one", but the Japanese are no different from the Chinese when it comes to their math prowess.
I don't understand why it's so hard for Americans to admit that Asian success in areas like math is simply because they work harder at it. In Asian cultures, there's a belief that your success is dependent on how hard you work, not your innate "intelligence". In America, if a child does well in school, he gets told over and over that he's smart, while a child who doesn't do well is told he's stupid. In Asia, if a child does well, he's told that he did a good job studying hard, while those who don't do well are told to try harder.
> "hachi, ni, yon, roku, shichi, go, ichi" isn't faster than "eight, two, four, six, seven, five, one"
Japanese has two sets of numbers. One is the one you gave, which is based on Japanese, and the other got imported along with kanji from China. Using the shortest forms of the kun readings, it would be "ya, fu, yo, mu, na, i, hito". I don't know if a typical Japanese speaker would memorize them that way, but since those forms are ingrained in the language, they should be able to do so without significant effort.
Now, to an English speaker, it may look like a wash; both appear to be strings of eight syllables. But the kun-based numeral sounds are in fact quite a bit faster.
> One is the one you gave, which is based on Japanese, and the other got imported along with kanji from China.
Wrong. "hachi", "ni", "roku", "shichi", "go", and "ichi" are Chinese-origin (on'yomi), not Japanese-origin (kun'yomi). The only number in my example that is Japanese-origin is "yon"[0], which is interchangeable with "shi" (the on'yomi equivalent) in many contexts.
> Using the shortest forms of the kun readings, it would be "ya, fu, yo, mu, na, i, hito".
Those readings are not used to count by native Japanese speakers (I speak Japanese and have lived in Japan), and I can't think of any examples off the top of my head where they would be used on their own.
> I don't know if a typical Japanese speaker would memorize them that way, but since those forms are ingrained in the language, they should be able to do so without significant effort.
My bad on flipping kun and on, but that doesn't change my point.
>Those readings are not used to count by native Japanese speakers (I speak Japanese and have lived in Japan) ... They do not.
Have you asked a native speaker? Speaking Japanese as a second language is not the same as speaking it natively, so unless you have discussed this with a native speaker, I don't think that's a sufficient credential.
Yes. I have been taught how to count correctly in Japanese in a college class by native Japanese instructors with graduate degrees in the instruction of Japanese to foreign learners.
And as for my experience not being "a sufficient credential", I don't think you realize (and I really do mean this in the nicest way possible) how ridiculously absurd your suggestion that anyone counts "eight, two, four, six, seven, five, one" as "ya, fu, yo, mu, na, i, hito" in Japanese sounds. It can be considered (very) roughly equivalent to suggesting that English speakers would memorize numbers using Latin or Greek prefixes.
I don't understand why it's so hard for Americans to admit that Asian success in areas like math is simply because they work harder at it. In Asian cultures, there's a belief that your success is dependent on how hard you work, not your innate "intelligence". In America, if a child does well in school, he gets told over and over that he's smart, while a child who doesn't do well is told he's stupid. In Asia, if a child does well, he's told that he did a good job studying hard, while those who don't do well are told to try harder.