To be fair, zero is a complicated number

    • 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.