Japanese Unlucky Numbers

[Almo]

I submit that the Japanese leaving the 4th floor off their hospitals is not mere superstition.

From http://japanese.about.com/blqow7.htm

The Japanese don't like the number 4 and 9 because of their pronunciation. Four is pronounced "shi" which is the same pronunciation as death. Nine is pronounced "ku" which has the same pronunciation as agony or torture.

Probably old news here, but I found it interesting nonetheless.

[Kilgore Trout]

I'd say that's still superstition, although not based in the supernatural. Having a quick look at "unlucky 13" on Wikipedia has several theories that don't revolve around something supernatural. Four and nine might be based on language, but still not based on reason.

Now, say, tossing salt over a shoulder would be based on the supernatural because, as understand one reason anyway, there is a demon and an angel over each shoulder. As salt was once seen as valuable (worth their weight in salt) and having strange properties, if you spilled some, you were supposed to appease the demon with a pinch of salt.

[Almo]

If "four" sounds like "death", and you have to say "Your dad is on the death floor," then I think there's a problem, and it's not superstition. It's politeness.

[Gaspode]

Interesting that 4 + 9 = 13. Coincidence?

Probably.

[Ron_Tomkins]

If "four" sounds like "death", and you have to say "Your dad is on the death floor," then I think there's a problem, and it's not superstition. It's politeness.

lol, "Your dad is on the death floor". I gotta find a context in which I can use that sentence somehow.

[Robaato]

FYI, when Japanese people say "fourth floor", they usually use the other, native Japanese reading of four -- "yon". (The pronuniation "shi" is derived from Chinese.) Thus, 4th floor = yon kai.　Or yokai. I'm not sure, actually. 4階

Last time I stayed at a hotel in Japan, my room was actually on the 13th floor. I took pictures...let's see if I can dig those up....

[arthwollipot]

Japanese has different words for numbers, depending on what you're counting.

[Silly Green Monkey]

Odd, the manga translation I read was using Yokai as 'spirit', where the English anime simply used 'demon'.

[Aepervius]

Where is kitakaze when you need him :). All I can contribute to this , "yon yon ni san" (4423).

[EHocking]

lol, "Your dad is on the death floor". I gotta find a context in which I can use that sentence somehow.Google is your friend :D.

The University of Screaming Children (USC) (http://members.aol.com/rndymks21/usc.html) is mainly dedicated to studying the Scream trilogy. ...

All of USC's students live on campus in the Father Death Dorm ...Death Dorm is the largest building on USC's campus - and it needs to be to house all of USC's students!
...
Here is a list of the specialty floors available at USC in Death Dorm:

Billy Loomis Floor
Casey Becker and Steve Orith Floor
Cici Cooper Floor
Derek Floor
Dewey Riley Floor
Father Death Floor
Sooo, "Have you seen my dad?", "Yeah, he's on Father Death Floor.".

How'd I do?
;)

[Robaato]

Odd, the manga translation I read was using Yokai as 'spirit', where the English anime simply used 'demon'.Japanese has a number of words that are pronounced the same, but have different meanings. Listening for context is very important.

Now that I've thought about it some more, I'm pretty sure that 4th floor is "yonkai", although typing it either way brings up the same kanji in my system: 『4階』

And "yōkai" 『妖怪』has a long vowel, so technically it's not the same as "yokai". Without the macron, it should be written "youkai," but that looks odd. (Or even "yookai")

My town is famous for being the birthplace of the creator of a popular yōkai manga. There are ghost and monster statues scattered all over town...

Robert
(has lived in Japan for almost the entire Bush (II) administration)

[Ron_Tomkins]

Google is your friend :D.

[/LEFT]
[/LIST]Sooo, "Have you seen my dad?", "Yeah, he's on Father Death Floor.".

How'd I do?
;)

I give it an 8. :)

[brettDbass]

Wiseman's book Quirkology has a very good section on this very subject.
Here's the associated website http://www.quirkology.com/

[I Ratant]

We built Tristars for All Nippon Airways.
The first four had large numbers on the nose as part of the ANA logo..
01, 02, 03, 05... no 04.

[Silly Green Monkey]

And "yōkai" 『妖怪』has a long vowel, so technically it's not the same as "yokai". Without the macron, it should be written "youkai," but that looks odd. (Or even "yookai")[/SIZE]

Well, the translator did spell it youkai, but he was British and threw 'u's in everywhere, so I figured it was one of those instances.

[arthwollipot]

I studied Japanese for two years - my teacher's surname was Barker. When he was in Japan he continually had to tell people that it was pronounced "bāka", not "baka".

"Baka" is the Japanese word for "idiot".

That's how careful you have to be about long vowels in Japanese.

[kitakaze]

Where is kitakaze when you need him :)On the fourth floor with the dead people.

[Magic 9-Ball]

We should export all of our 13th floors to Japan, and import their 4th and 9th floors. That sounds like a 2 for 1 deal.

International trade is good for the economy.

[Arus808]

yes, in Japanese, there is a counter for nearly everything. It all depends on the "suffix"
long, slender objects = the suffix is hon or bon or pon
people/persons = the suffix is nin
flat objects (paper) = the suffix is mai
bound objects (books) = satsu
animals = hiki or biki
age (as in how old) = sai
floors = kai or gai
And generic counter (tsu)


and each counter has its own Kanji related to the counter.

Shi (4) is only used in certain situations for counting in japan; most times its reverted to the chinese counting of yo or yon

A good list of counters and their meanings are here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word


Definitely rooted in superstition.

[wollery]

4 in Chinese is Si (pronounced like sir, but shorter). It also sounds like the pronunciation of the word meaning death, and is, therefore, also not generally used for floor numbering in hotels, although most residential blocks do have a 4th floor.

[gtc]

I think I have mentioned this before but the apartments in my old block in Sydney were numbered 1, 2, 3, 3A, 5 and 6. The bigger block next door had units 1, 2, 3, 3A, ... 13, 13A, 15 etc.

They must have been built with the Asian market in mind. Which is odd as the largest cultural group was Turkish.

[wollery]

Interesting, since in Asia it's only the 4th floor that's missing, I've never seen a missing 14th, 24 etc floor.

[kitakaze]

yes, in Japanese, there is a counter for nearly everything.I just feel like making casual mention of the time our gloriously stupid governor of Tokyo, Ishihara Shintaro, caused something of a kerfuffle when he made some rather off-colour, shall we say, comments regarding the legitimacy of French as an international language based on ideas he had about the way French count. From his wikipedia entry:

During an inauguration of a university building in 2004, Ishihara stated that French is unqualified as an international language because it is "a language in which nobody can count," referring to the counting system in French, which he believed to be based on units of twenty rather than ten (as is the case in Japanese and English). The statement led to a lawsuit from several language schools in 2005. Ishihara subsequently responded to comments that he did not disrespect French culture by professing his love of French literature on Japanese TV news.

I'll have some irony with a side order of dumb, thanks.

Needless to say he got a lot of French textbooks in the mail.

[Molinaro]

91 in French is quatre-vingt-onze. Which translates into four-twenty-eleven.

There's some interesting relashionships to the number 20 in the way the words are formed for counting in the 70s, 80s, 90s. But it has nothing to do with any difference in number base. It's purely a nomenclature thingy.

[Robaato]

interesting note on Japanese counting:

In English, ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and then it repeats, right? Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, etc.

In Japanese, ones (ichi), tens (juu), hundreds (hyaku), thousands (sen), ten thousands (man), and THEN it repeats. Tens of ten thousands (juu man), hundreds of ten thousands (hyaku man), thousands of ten thousands (sen man), etc. So, a number like, say, 4,321,000 would be literally translated from Japanese as four hundred and 32 ten thousands and one thousand (yonhyaku sanjuu ni man issen, 432万1千).

[wollery]

Same in Chinese.

[gtc]

The Indian numbering system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system) is even more distinct with a lakh of 1,00,000 and a crore of 1,00,00,000 (the commas are placed differently too).

[rjh01]

interesting note on Japanese counting:

In English, ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and then it repeats, right? Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, etc.
<snip>

Technical amendment
In English we also have
million (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/million) = thousand thousand.
Billion (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Billion) = thousand million
Trillion (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Trillion) = million million

Edit. Forgot to say that the English numbering system is based on the Arabic interpretation of the Indian numbering system.

[Robaato]

Yes, but no one actually says two thousand thousands instead of two million, do they?

Of course, in casual English usage, some people say things like fifteen hundred for one thousand five hundred...and then there's the now seldom-used long scale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_scale) (billion = million millions, trillion = million billions, etc.)....

In Japan, ichi, hyaku, sen, man (10,000), repeat...the next word for big numbers is oku (ten thousand ten thousands -- 100,000,000) then chō (ten thousand hundred millions -- 1,000,000,000,000). This is derived from the Chinese system of counting, as wollery mentioned.

二億三千四百五十六万五千四百三十二
nioku sanzenyonhyakugojyuurokuman gosenyonhyakusanjyuuni
two (hundred millions) three thousand four hundred fifty six (ten thousands) five thousand four hundred thirty two
234,565,432

[arthwollipot]

Technical amendment
In English we also have
million (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/million) = thousand thousand.
Billion (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Billion) = thousand million
Trillion (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Trillion) = million millionMinor correction - you are referring to American English.

In English English, a billion is a million million and a trillion is a billion billion. A thousand million is correctly called a "milliard" but no-one cares.

[Complexity]

Superstitious nonsense.

[Robaato]

In English English, a billion is a million million and a trillion is a billion billion. A thousand million is correctly called a "milliard" but no-one cares.
Still? According to the Wiki link in my previous post:
For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the United Kingdom uniformly used the long scale, while the United States of America used the short scale, so that usage of the two systems was often referred to as "British" and "American" respectively. In 1974 the government of the UK abandoned the long scale, so that the UK now applies the short scale interpretation exclusively in mass media and official usage. Although some residual long-scale usage still continues, the terms "British" and "American" no longer represent accurate terminology.So is this a case where the government mandates a pointless change and no one cares?:confused:

[EHocking]

Still? According to the Wiki link in my previous post:
So is this a case where the government mandates a pointless change and no one cares?:confused:Some people do care. I have noticed that a number of UK scientific and financial types, when talking big numbers, will say "1000 million" or "one million million" rather than be misunderstood or misquoted by using "billion".

Well, I've noticed it enough for it to register with me.

[erlando]

In Danish we use
"million" = 1,000,000
"milliard" = 1,000,000,000
"billion" = 1,000,000,000,000

It's quite confusing sometimes to hear "billion" meaning our "milliard". I guess we just never left long scale..

[arthwollipot]

So is this a case where the government mandates a pointless change and no one cares?:confused:No, I think it's a case of yet more creeping Americanism. :D

[amindformurder]

I have worked for more than 20 years with several Asian companies. All have preferred using 1-888 toll-free numbers over 1-800 numbers because more 8's are lucky. Anyone consider that the Olympics opens 8-8-08? It's not a coincidence.