JENNIFER LINDSAY*

2 x 2 = 4. Two twos are four. Is that how you learnt to say this too? I learnt it back in the prehistoric era when we learnt times tables by rote. They had a rhythm to them, daadaa da daa; daadaa dadaa-daa (two tens are twenty); daadaa dadaa-da-daa (two twelves are twenty four) and so on. In English, the numbers from 1-12, except for 7 and 11, all have one syllable; the teens (except for 17) have two syllables, as do all the te