Chinese numbers

nfsu2 , 1 month ago

I dont know Chinese but it probable means empty or something.

alcoholicorn , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

According to wiktionary, it means to wither and fall, in some contexts it's used to refer to rain or tears.

It also means bottom(in gay contexts). lmao what that zerussy do?

nfsu2 , 1 month ago

Hmmm, like death? as in cease to exist? Very interesting anyways.

alcoholicorn , 1 month ago

No, death is 4 actually. Nobody knows why.

nantsuu , 1 month ago

We do know why, it's because death 死 and four 四 have the same pronunciation sǐ in Chinese (and shi in Japanese).

alcoholicorn , 1 month ago

No shit, but why is it a homophone with such a common word?

chayleaf , 1 month ago

homophones are common in Chinese and Japanese because there's only so many potential readings of a hieroglyph, but each one has a different meaning

alcoholicorn , 1 month ago

Sure, but they're often different enough to to be obvious in context, or similar enough to have a shared etymology.

Tones came later in Chinese, so when you have 2 homophones with similar meaning and different tones, they're usually from words that had 2 suffixes, which were later dropped, but the tone of first part remained, 买 and 卖 didn't end up with the same word by coincidence.

nantsuu , 1 month ago

Every language has homophones. Even before tones were created, sometimes there are just coincidences. As far as I know, there's nothing to suggest that the number four and death are inherently related in some way. No one is suggesting that knead and need are related even though they sound the same, and lead (the act of leading) and lead (the metal) may happen to share a spelling but they're still completely different words.

randint , 1 month ago

一 (one) also means top (in gay contexts). It's because 0 looks like a hole and 1 looks like a penis.

Xanthrax , 1 month ago

It meant "falling from the heavans"/ "rain"