Comment by SonOfLilit

There's a difference between memorizing meanings of words (addition is same as counting this and then the other thing, "3" means three things) and memorizing methods (table of single digit addition/multiplication to do them faster in your head). You were arguing the second, I'm a counterexample. I agree about the first, everyone learns language by memorization (some rote, some by use), but language is not math.