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(gay).

          • 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.