Why are China, Japan and Korea reading numbers according to the Chinese system, only Vietnam is different?

Both Japan and South Korea have systems to read the nation's native numbers. However, they use a digital reading system for Chinese people. Specifically, the two countries use the system to read indigenous numbers for small numbers, and for large numbers, mathematical calculations use the Chinese system. Why so?

Photo of Dai Thanh Toan Phap of the scholar Luong The Vinh.

To answer this question, a user named Quan Trinh on Quora said that the source originated in medieval times . "At that time, most people were farmers. If you were a Japanese or Korean farmer in the Middle Ages, what would you use to do? Maybe to count things like chickens. And that's the purpose of the system to count native numbers: used for everyday life ".

'On the contrary, the ruling class has other more macroscopic concerns such as population, area, taxation, trade, etc. And so they have adopted China's digital system to solve problems. their threads. So Japan and Korea have two parallel counting systems that originate from the Middle Ages until now. Vietnam in the past is the same. We also have 2 digital counting systems: Chinese counting system for management and native number counting system for Vietnamese people to use everyday ".

'However, by the 19th century, Vietnam became a colony of French colonialists. The government was founded by French educated people and there was no reason for them to continue using the Chinese system. Instead, the new government expanded to use the Vietnamese counting system for large numbers based on the Western system. At that time, the Chinese - Vietnamese words used to count large numbers were only past, although people still understood the meaning of those words but rarely used them. Examples are celestial or thousands. At the same time, the French government is also the agent that makes Vietnam's numbering system different from Japan, Korea and China : If the three countries' counting system is based on multiples of 10,000, Vietnam's counting system is based on multiples of 1000, such as' thousand '= 1,000,' million '= 1,000,000,' billion '= 1,000,000,000, . similar to the West'.