To be fair, zero is a complicated number

  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    I’m sure the chinese have equivalent memes about having to learn arabic numbers, at least you don’t have to use it in written out numbers, 20 is 二十, two-ten, 200 is 二百, two-hundred, 2000 is 二千, two-thousand, 200,000 is 二十万, two-hundred-thousand.

    There less memorizing irregular words like twelve and X-teen and converting 30 to thirty, since it’s all pronounced as written.

    • lobut@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      It probably sounds silly but I quite enjoy not memorizing different names for days of the weeks and months like when I was learning french … Lundi, Mardi …

      Nice to be like 星期一,星期二,星期三 … for week days and 一月,二月,三月… for months.

      • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        Same, and not having to remember different versions of words for tense and gender is great. Where Chinese gets you back though, is measure words. Is a can of beans many 颗? 粒? One 包? Oh I was supposed to remember 罐?

        • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
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          7 months ago

          I mean tbf you’re addressing a can of bean, so 罐 is correct. It’s the container that count, not the content.

        • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          I don’t mind the measure words so much because you can always use the generic one and people will understand, it’s the tones that really mess me up.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            I find the tones are hard, but I find it’s easier to remember them within a sentence than for individual worlds. Good news is if you mess it up, context still makes it possible to figure out what you meant.

    • Frozengyro@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Japanese pronounces some numbers different depending on what you are counting. Is this the same for Chinese?

      • SourDrink @lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I think there are certain phrases found in different dialects of Chinese. In Cantonese, the formal way of reading twenty is 十二, but the colloquial term would be 廿.

      • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        No, but whenever you have something that’s countable (even if it’s just 1), you have to do <number> <measure word> <thing>, so instead of “I have a ticket” or “we want 2 waters”, you have to do “I have 1 <measure word for flat things> ticket” or “I(plural) want 2 <measure word for cups> water”.

        There’s a generic measure word, but I think it’s seen as improper to use it.

      • chingadera@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Bro first of all, no one should ever freeze a gyro, second, will you please elaborate because that is 100% interesting

    • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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      7 months 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?

          • nantsuu@fedia.io
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            7 months ago

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

              • chayleaf@lemmy.ml
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                7 months 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@lemmy.ml
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                  7 months 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.

  • Dagnet@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Probably because zero is technically a concept not a number. Roman numerals didn’t even have a zero

  • yokonzo@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I mean I kind of get it, it’s symbol based, and the symbol kind of looks like an all consuming void sucking things up, a representation of the absence of things

  • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    ITT, a bunch of people who know literally nothing about this subject offering explanations.

    The character 零 (“líng”) contains a semantic component (on the top) and a sound component (on the bottom), the semantic component is 雨, meaning rain, and the sound component is 令 “lìng”.

    The word initially referred to very light rain and so the character essentially means “the type of rain that sounds like lìng”. For whatever reason the meaning drifted from very light rain towards “barely any” and then “nothing/zero”.

    The bottom/top usage is simple, the “zero” is the receiving hole and the “one” is the penetrating appendage, i.e. the submissive versus the dominant partner. That usage is definitely slang, though!