Well, That's Kind of Discouraging

New study shows that Austrialian aboriginal children can count "even though their languages only have normal words for one, two, few and many". To some extent, this is in line with prior research about human beings' innate ability for systematic and symbolic thought, such as the spontaneous development of an internally consistent sign language in an isolated Bedouin community during the past 70 years, and whose genetic disposition has rendered 5% of its population deaf.

In both cases, oral language is an accessary rather than a prerequisite for abstract thoughts.

But I digress, the money quote comes from Brian Butterworth, one of the principal investigators of the aboriginies study:

"We found that Warlpiri and Anindilyakwa children performed as well as or better than the English-speaking children on a range of tasks, and on numerosities up to nine, even though they lacked number words."

How do you like to be outperformed in math by someone whose language doesn't even have the word three, four, five, six, seven, eight or nine?