Found this on the web-
Asian people, especially the Chinese, are often particularly good at math because of their language. The system of words used for numbers in Chinese is far more clear and logical than in Indo-European languages. There are Chinese words for the numbers 1-9 ( yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu ), plus multipliers 10 ( shi ), 100 ( bai ), and 10,000 ( wan ). There are no special words for the numbers 11-19 or multiples of ten (20, 30, and so on). Thus 11 is shi yi (ten one). The number 35 is san shi wu (three ten five). Note that the words relate more closely to the symbols, making them easier to understand. Kevin Miller and his colleagues found that four-yearold Chinese children, on average, could count to 40, while American children of the same age could count only to 15. This delay is due to the difficulties with the “teens” numbers, which do not follow the same pattern as other numbers. While American children do eventually catch up, by that time, Chinese children would have had several years more experience handling larger numbers than their American counterparts.
The conciseness of the Chinese number words is also an advantage. Our memory span for a list of numbers relates directly to the length of the words used for those numbers. Native Chinese speakers can routinely remember strings of nine or 10 numbers, whereas native English speakers can only manage six or seven.