I would not say it feels so clearly that in a foreign language, I learn words, and in the native, concepts. When I read about math in English it is frustratingly ‘alien’, I even find it easier to read a paragraph without immediately trying to tie the terms to ‘just the good old things we all know and love’, and just trace its syntactic connections. I can even manipulate the ‘English math concepts’ in my mind, at least a bit, but actually believing that they relate to the same things takes additional work.
I would not say it feels so clearly that in a foreign language, I learn words, and in the native, concepts. When I read about math in English it is frustratingly ‘alien’, I even find it easier to read a paragraph without immediately trying to tie the terms to ‘just the good old things we all know and love’, and just trace its syntactic connections. I can even manipulate the ‘English math concepts’ in my mind, at least a bit, but actually believing that they relate to the same things takes additional work.