So for context, I went to first grade in mainland China before immigrating to the United States, in China, they teach kids this weird trick that’s basically like reciting a “poem” thing, which I didn’t remember what it was called until I recently googled it. Its apparantly called the “九九乘法口诀表” or 9x9 Song / “The Nine-nine song” (Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_multiplication_table#The_Nine-nine_song_text_in_Chinese).

So like… in 2nd grade, for which I was in the US, multiplication was very easy for me, well… at least up to 10x10. Like idk how to explain it to someone who’s doesn’t speak a variant of Chinese, and even the rhythm only works for me in Mandarin somehow, when I try to use Cantonese, which is the language I speak at home in the US, I cannot replicate the rhythm to make thay thing work, this “Poem”/“Song” is only available to me in Mandarin, like when I think about multiplying together any 2 single digit number, I instictively use the “九九乘法口诀表”.

Like its goes from 1x1 then next lines are 1x2, 2x2, then next are 1x3, 2x3, 3x3, then its 1x4, 2x4, 3x4, 4x4, etc… you get the idea, mutiples of 1, then 2, then 3. So if I need to multiply something by 7, I can start from the line where multiples of 7 are. Sometimes I can remember the exact phrase of it like for example 3x7, without starting from 1x7, then 2x7, then 3x7.

Like I never thought too hard about it, it kinda just became the “normal” way I do multiplication. But someone asked a question on Lemmy about reading analog clocks and I probably didn’t answer their question correctly but that was when I kinda was like: oh wow I forgot that my way of multiplication is probably different from everyone else in the west.

Like if you told me to teach a English-Only speaker on how to do multiplication tables, I… um… I don’t know how I would teach that, the “九九乘法口诀表” doesn’t have the rhythm in English so I doubt converting the it to English would work.

Like even though I speak English as my primary language now, and I barely have any fluency in Mandarin or even Cantonese which I speak at home (and never learned any vocabulary beyond the basics), the “九九乘法口诀表” multiplication thing is always done in mandarin somehow, like its always been stuck in my brain even after all these years in the US.

TLDR answer to my own question. I do it using “九九乘法口诀表” which takes me 1-2 seconds to recall a specific line, so basically, anything up to 10x10 takes about 2 seconds for my brsin to process, 11x11x to 12x12 takes about 5-10 seconds, anything bigger and I just giveup using my brain and pull out a calculator. I memorized 10x10 since first grade, then 12x12 probably by like 2nd grade or maybe first half of 3rd grade.

How do y’all do it, is it easy or hard?

Edit: Okay so the best way for me to explain “九九乘法口诀表” is that: Think of PEMDAS (order of operations), but its for the entire multiplication up to 9x9.