this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
985 points (99.3% liked)

Memes

45647 readers
1076 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

To be fair, zero is a complicated number

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 45 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

No, death is 4 actually. Nobody knows why.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

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