Number homophone, in full
Mandarin and Cantonese are full of near-matches, because both have short syllables and a limited stock of them. Eight, 八 ba, sits close to 發 fa, to prosper, the fa of facai. Four, 四 si, sits close to 死 si, death, and closer still in Cantonese where both come out as sei. Nine, 九 jiu, matches 久 jiu, long-lasting, which is why nine turns up at weddings. Six, 六 liu, echoes 溜 liu, smooth going.
Japanese runs the same logic through its two reading systems. Four can be read shi, which is also the reading of 死, death, or yon, which is not, and speakers reach for yon whenever a count could be heard the wrong way. Nine can be read ku, matching 苦, suffering, or kyu, which is neutral. Gifts are given in threes and fives rather than fours, and hotels and hospitals sometimes drop the numbers from rooms and floors entirely.
Whole digit strings work the same way and have produced a shorthand of their own online. 520, wu er ling, is near enough to 我愛你 wo ai ni, I love you, that 20 May has become an informal Chinese equivalent of Valentine's Day. 1314 stands in for 一生一世 yisheng yishi, one life one lifetime, so 5201314 reads as I love you forever. The insult 250, er bai wu, means something close to idiot.
- Number culture
- Number wordplay, Numeric homophone
A worked example
The effect turns up in data, not only in prices. Phillips and colleagues, writing in the BMJ in 2001, took as their starting point that death and four are pronounced almost identically in Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese, then looked at when people actually died. Among Chinese and Japanese Americans in California, deaths from chronic heart disease peaked on the fourth of the month at 1.27 times the expected number, with the interval running from 1.15 to 1.39. Nothing about the fourth of a month is physically different from the third or the fifth.
Sources
In Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese the words for death and four are pronounced almost identically, and cardiac deaths among Chinese and Japanese Americans peaked on the fourth of the month, reaching a ratio of observed to expected deaths of 1.27 (1.15 to 1.39) for chronic heart disease deaths in California.
Phillips et al., "The Hound of the Baskervilles effect", BMJ 2001;323:1443520 in Mandarin sounds close to wo ai ni, I love you, and 1314 sounds like one life one lifetime, used to mean forever.
Wikipedia — Numbers in Chinese culture
See also
Where it comes up on this site
Number homophone: frequently asked
Eight, ba, sounds like fa, to prosper. The link is sound and nothing else, so it vanishes in any language where the two words are unrelated.
It stands in for wo ai ni, I love you, so 20 May is an informal romantic date in China.
Depends on the language. In Chinese, jiu sounds like the word for long-lasting, so nine shows up at weddings and in imperial symbolism. In Japanese, one reading of nine is ku, which matches the word for suffering, so it gets avoided in some settings and the neutral reading kyu is preferred aloud.