看看下面的数字：4、8、5、3、9、7、6，将它们大声读出来，然后背过脸去，用20秒来仔细回忆，然后再按正确的顺序大声读出来。

　　If you speak English, you have about a 50 percent chance of remembering that sequence perfectly.

　　如果英语是你的母语，那么复述正确的机率将是50%。

　　If you're Chinese, though, you're almost certain to get it right every time. What is that?

　　如果你是中国人，那么正确率几乎可以达到100%。为什么会这样？

　　Because as human beings, we store digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds.

　　因为人类存储数字的记忆循环（memory loop）是2秒钟，

　　We most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within that two-second span.

　　我们可以很容易地记住我们在2秒钟内所说的话或所读到的内容。

　　And Chinese speakers get that list of numbers—4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6—right every time,

　　当中国人在读“4、8、5、3、9、7、6”这一串数字时，每次刚好都是2秒钟。

　　because unlike English speakers, their language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds.

　　与英语不同，汉语中7个数字的发音只需要2秒钟的时间。

　　That example comes from Stanislas Dehaene's book The Number Sense.

　　这个例子选自斯塔尼斯拉斯·德阿纳（Stanislas Dehaene）的《数感》（The Number Sense）一书，

　　An as Dehaene explains: Chinese number words are remarkably brief.

　　在书中，德阿纳解释道：中国的数字非常简易。

　　Most of them can be uttered in less than one quarter second. For instance, four is "si" and seven "qi".

　　大多数数字的发音只有四分之一秒（举个例子来说，“4”的读音是“si”，而“7”的读音是“qi”），

　　Their English equivalence, four, seven, are longer: pronouncing them takes about one third of a second.

　　他们相当于英语中的“four”和“seven”，seven听起来似乎还要长，这些数字的发音需要三分之一秒。

　　The memory gap between English and Chinese apparently is entirely due to this difference in length.

　　英语和汉语语言长度上的差异，造成了英语和汉语在记忆上的时间差距。

　　In languages as diverse as Welsh, Arabic, Chinese, English and Hebrew,

　　语言被区分成很多种，如威尔士语、阿拉伯语、汉语、英语和希伯来语。

　　there is a reproducible corelation between the time required to pronounce numbers in a given language and the memory span of its speakers.

　　讲话者的记忆能力通常同他输出数字时所需时间长短有因果关联。

　　In this domain, the prize for efficacy goes to the Cantonese dialect of Chinese, whose brevity grants residents of Hong Kong a rocketing memory span of about ten digits.

　　在这个领域里，最佳记忆力的奖项要颁发给讲粤语的中国人。语言上的优势使得香港人获得了超群的记忆能力，他们甚至可以用1秒钟记住10个数字。

　　It turns out that there is also a big difference in how number naming systems in Western and Asian languages are constructed.

　　这也同样表明，在数字符号体系方面，西方国家和亚洲国家有很大的差别。

　　In English, we say 14, 16, 17, 18, and 19.

　　在英语中，我们把“14、16、17、18、19”称做“fourteen、sixteen、seventeen、eighteen、nineteen”。