[jhancock]

"it’s the reason that U.S. phone numbers have seven digits"

I used to believe these sorts of things until living in China and noticing cell numbers are 11 in length and Chinese don't have a problem remembering loads of them. I saw an article not long ago pointing out that CJK languages have only one syllable per number word, which may enable them to deal with longer strings of them more easily.

[sp332]

Yeah, I'm not sure the telephone thing holds much water. Sequences are much easier to remember. No one has trouble remembering the tune or lyrics of a song they like, far more than 7 notes / words.

[klipt]

http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/outliers_excerpt3.html

[ZeroGravitas]

"For fractions, we say three fifths. The Chinese is literally, 'out of five parts, take three.'"

You could also say that three-fifths is literally "out of five parts take three" too, just more tersely. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that in Chinese languages the meaning has not atrophied to the same degree or is more verbosely specified (which kind of counters the brevity argument they use for integer digits).

[jhancock]

Perhaps a bilingual Chinese person could weigh in on this. For this exercise, we are concerned with the language in their head, not what they say when they talk to another. I'm guessing they think in terms of math notation with word-numbers, so "3/5" in their head would be "one-syllable-number" "slash" "one-syllable-number".