ABSTRACT
The universe cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangle, circles and other geometrical figures without which it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word
(Galileo (1623) cited by Hilliam 2004: 171)
Mathematicians and educators alike are agreed that mathematics both is and has a language of its own (du Sautoy 2008; Boaler 2009; Mercer and Littleton 2007; Alexander 2010). Marcus du Sautoy (2008: 4) describes going with his father to buy some books recommended by his teacher. He writes:
When I got home I started looking at the books we’d bought. The Language of Mathematics particularly intrigued me . . . I’d never thought of mathematics as a language. At school it seemed to be just numbers that you could multiply or divide, add or subtract, with varying degrees of difficulty. But as I looked through this book I could see why my teacher had told me to ‘find out what maths is really about’.
