this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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To be fair, zero is a complicated number

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[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 43 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 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?

[–] randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 5 points 7 months ago

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

[–] nfsu2@feddit.cl 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

No, death is 4 actually. Nobody knows why.

[–] nantsuu@fedia.io 9 points 7 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).

[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] chayleaf@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 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

[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 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.

[–] nantsuu@fedia.io 1 points 7 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.