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Japanese Unlucky Numbers

Almo

Masterblazer
Almo
Joined
Aug 30, 2005
Messages
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Location
Montreal, Quebec
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.
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Probably old news here, but I found it interesting nonetheless.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Almo said:
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.
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lol, "Your dad is on the death floor". I gotta find a context in which I can use that sentence somehow.
 
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....
 
Odd, the manga translation I read was using Yokai as 'spirit', where the English anime simply used 'demon'.
 
Ron_Tomkins said:
lol, "Your dad is on the death floor". I gotta find a context in which I can use that sentence somehow.
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Google is your friend :D.

The University of Screaming Children (USC) 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​
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  • ​
Sooo, "Have you seen my dad?", "Yeah, he's on Father Death Floor.".

How'd I do?
;)​
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
Odd, the manga translation I read was using Yokai as 'spirit', where the English anime simply used 'demon'.
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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)
 
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.
 
Robaato said:
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]
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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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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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.
 
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