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[–] 196 points 3 months ago (17 children)
  • [–] 44 points 3 months ago (3 children)
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    [–] 123 points 3 months ago* (15 children)

    1 = 壹 2 = 貳 3 = 參 4 = 肆 5 = 伍

    These exist as well.

    They're used in places where numbers should NOT be forged(i.e. bank documents...)

    This is how they got their numeric meanings btw.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I don't get 4. At least the kanji 4 looks very different

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Yeaaaah, I don't know Chinese, but I've never seen a kanji of four horizontal lines, just 四 for 4

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Does 0 have a shorthand character as well?

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    [–] 69 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Sure, when you mean "zero" it may look a bit excessive. But it's quite adequate if you want to express "Void, the Dark Realm of Nothingness and End of All Things".

    ps: Glory to ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ.

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  • [–] 62 points 3 months ago* (5 children)

    Yeah líng 零 is pretty annoying as a learner of the language.

    The top character is yŭ 雨 which means rain. Confusingly, this is the semantic component - the part that contains the meaning of the character. Explained below.

    The bottom character líng 令 means order/command as a noun and verb. This doesn't add meaning, it is the phonetic component: basically a pronunciation cue.

    It originally meant "light rain"/"falling in drops, like rain", actually. It began being used to mean "fragments" or "leftover part", then as "remainder" in the mathematical sense. Then, eventually, to mean 0. Another form of líng is 霝 which means raindrops. It has 3 kŏu 口 ("mouth") characters on the bottom to visually represent drops.

    So, like a lot of Chinese characters, it really only makes sense when you understand the etymology - and even then it's kind of a stretch

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    [–] 56 points 3 months ago* (8 children)

    The concept of zero is scary, so it's a wizard shooting lightning from all orifices. Makes sense.

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    [–] 23 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    No one has mentioned special 2, 两! It’s only for counting certain things.

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    [–] 15 points 3 months ago

    You don't divide by 0 in Chinese because he'll jump off the page and kick your ass.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (11 children)

    well atleast this post + Comments taught me some Chinese.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago

    "Three, Two, One... NOTHING"

    scratches head in Mandarin

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    Japanese enters the chat:

    Left: numeral; middle: regular writing; final: certain formal and non-forgery usecases.

    または in point 7 means either variant is OK

    The last line says one can use the modern yen sign as well (though some would argue that it's bad manners in at least some situations, but I have no dog in that fight).

    万 = 10k. Several countries use both 1k and 10k units (Japan traditionally was on the 10k side but had a lot of influence so now we see both a lot. A used car price might be 130万円 or something ( = 1,300,000 yen)

    数字	通常の漢字	金額で使う旧字体(大字)  
    0	零	零  
    1	一	壱  
    2	二	弐  
    3	三	参  
    4	四	肆  
    5	五	伍  
    6	六	陸  
    7	七	柒(または 漆)  
    8	八	捌  
    9	九	玖  
    10	十	拾  
    100	百	佰  
    1k	千	仟  
    万	万	萬  
    円	円	圓(もしくは「円」のまま)  
    

    Chart from here that looks better: https://saiseich.com/business/kanji_kingaku/

    We have a way of writing numbers in certain situations. Think of it like checks in the US where we write things in a certain way so that the numbers can't be easily changed to increase the value or something.

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    [–] 13 points 3 months ago* (31 children)

    Japanese isn’t much better:

    一、二、三… 四。

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    [–] 10 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I see a little person jumping up and spinning in midair to make an egg shape like a zero

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    [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    Lmao, I just picked up learning Kanji again after like 3 years (never had time in grad school)

    It is rough. But fierce repetition helps a lot. I can see the characters for "read a book" whenever I close my eyelids now hahaha

    Once something turns into muscle memory you don't forget.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (10 children)

    Three pigs

    Two pigs

    One pig

    Zero pig ? Or zero pigs?

    Honest question. Do we pluralize nouns of zero count? Or should they be singular?

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    [–] 7 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    零 isn't too bad as far as chinese characters are concerned. you should see the character for depression. or the biang biang noodles character, although that one is kind of a meme

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