This little language blip isn’t unique to me.
How firmly are our minds stuck inside our vocabulary boxes?
Perhaps learning new words really means thinking new thoughts.
That’s because numbers aren’t integral to the Tsimane' lifestyle.
Because of this, Tsimane' adults have assorted repertoires of number words.
For instance, someone who knew number words through 15 began making mistakes around 13 or 14.
“Beyond that range,” the researchers write in their paper, “they resorted to numerical approximation.
However, Gibson notes that “language” can be thought of pretty loosely in the case of numbers.
