To be fair, zero is a complicated number
Zero looks like an angry man with a long mustache and goatee.
deleted by creator
Well, it couldn’t be the natural progression.
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
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!
Thank you for giving the correct explanation. Pretty sure all those other “explanations” are just jokes though.
So basically the word for zero is “drizzle”?
That’s awesome
Ultimately that’s the origin of the character. Although it’s quite common to see “〇” in written shorthand when 零 is being used as a middle or final zero in a number otherwise written in characters, like 906 could be written as 九零六 or 九〇六.
So my Chinese is pretty distant from actual usage, but when did 906 stop being 九百六？
In spoken language 九百六 isn’t 906 but 960 ( shortened version of 九百六十), 906 is 九百零六.
Sorry, it wasn’t clear at all - that’s meant to be a number string, like for a key code or phone number.
Ah! Makes sense!
What about 无, In what context is that used?
To not have or be without, more of a verb, somewhat literary.
0 = diarrhea man. Got it!
What the fuck
swap.avi
I dont know Chinese but it probable means empty or something.
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?
Hmmm, like death? as in cease to exist? Very interesting anyways.
No, death is 4 actually. Nobody knows why.
deleted by creator
We do know why, it’s because death 死 and four 四 have the same pronunciation sǐ in Chinese (and shi in Japanese).
No shit, but why is it a homophone with such a common word?
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
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.
一 (one) also means top (in gay contexts). It’s because 0 looks like a hole and 1 looks like a penis.
It meant “falling from the heavans”/ “rain”
I would have interpreted that as ‘prolapse’
Good thing no one is expecting me to provide translations
It’s clearly a man pissing his name into the snow (in simplified Chinese)
Good energy, it just didn’t work here. It would if you had the word bussy: 菊
It’s literally “crysanthemum”, but that makes it funnier that the other meaning is arsehole. Somebody obviously decided they look similar. Not specifically a male arsehole, mind.
干爆我的菊花
This does not literally mean “explode my crysanthemum flower”.
You didn’t translate the first character “干”, originally means “do”, and like in English, eventually evolved to “fuck”, like in “do me”.
To make things even worse, 干 also means dry, when using a different tone. And 爆 is also a cooking technique, where they stir fry diced (or sliced) meat with very high heat to cook, resulting in a crispy and dry exterior and juicy inside.
A famous joke is that 干爆鸭子 (when written) can simultaneous mean the delicious “crispy diced duck”, or “fuck the duck until it explodes”.
I did gloss over that, yes.
Yeah, why didn’t they just go with 0 lines?
Edit: /s
Sometimes you need to explicitly state a zero and a blank space could be misconstrued.
It’s basically what Arabic numerals did.
“I circled the zero lines here.”
Holy shit… That means fonts that differentiate Zero from Capital O with a dot or line are technically false…
Probably because zero is technically a concept not a number. Roman numerals didn’t even have a zero
0000
wdym complicated? it’s easy!
壹貳參肆伍陸柒捌玖拾 see? easy!
For everyone who don’t know, this is the complicated version of Chinese numbers. In modern days, they are mostly used in writing cheques, because these characters are not as easily modified as the simple version.
How do they decide what the complicated character for 7 should be? Why does it include the symbol of a tree? Can natives derive the meaning of a new symbol by its components or are they just as clueless as we are until they learn the word?
The character used to refer to a type of tree sap, but shares the same pronounciation as 七. I’m guessing the reason it’s considered offensive is because the top component implies ejaculation, but that’s something I’d need to check!
Even as a Hongkonger myself, I have no idea. We just see these characters as ancient numbers.
Also, if you write 柒 in an informal context, it is considered offensive.
Traditional chinese. It scares me.
Nope, these are bank numerals for banknotes and checks
It’s a dude with his hands on his hips and his shadow beneath him.
He’s also going wtf is this
This reminded me of Akuma’s death symbol from Street Fighter and it’s actually pretty close.
