Luxembourgers who were taught maths at primary school in German and French at secondary level -- and also have Luxembourgish as their mother tongue -- do addition differently in one language than the other, a University of Luxembourg study showed.

Researchers recruited people who were schooled that way and continued studies at francophone universities in Belgium, meaning they had mastered both French and German.

"In the tests, it became evident that the subjects were able to solve simple addition tasks equally well in both languages," the university said in a statement. "However, for complex addition in French, they required more time than with an identical task in German. Moreover, they made more errors when attempting to solve tasks in French."

The research by Dr. Amandine Van Rinsveld and Professor Dr. Christine Schiltz involved functional magnetic resonance imaging which measured the brain activity of the test subjects. Depending on the language used, different brain regions were stimulated.

(Alistair Holloway, alistair.holloway@wort.lu, +352 49 93 739)