No one has mentioned special 2, 两! It’s only for counting certain things.
this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
679 points (99.4% liked)
memes
21360 readers
2566 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
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.
You don't divide by 0 in Chinese because he'll jump off the page and kick your ass.
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?
It's plural, but not because there are many pigs.
"How many pigs are there?" And answering with "There are no pigs" use the noun "pigs" in the same way. They are referring to the "pig" category or kind. When answering knowing the actual count, it's a specific number or token.
"are" makes it plural
if the sentence had "is" instead, it would be singular: there is no pig
But they are asking with the number zero specifically. "There is zero pig" is not how we speak.
In English you use plural for zero count. I have zero pigs. There are 0 cows.
Lil fella with smelly armpits and the buttsquirts?
The concept of zero is scary, so it's a wizard shooting lightning from all orifices. Makes sense.
I was thinking it was so scary, it’s someone pissing themself
Under the arms and from the butt are the orifices?
armpitussy
This got weird SO fast.
The Greeks felt the same - thankfully Eastern philosophy had a different take on it.
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.
Their math homework must take forever
So 伍 is not 5, but five.
correct
I don't get 4. At least the kanji 4 looks very different
Yeaaaah, I don't know Chinese, but I've never seen a kanji of four horizontal lines, just 四 for 4
I never learned it as four lines. 四 was the way to do it. Maybe locally or something the hip kids are doing? Source: Mandarin professor ETA: I was a person of simplified Chinese though
A very Christmassy number, that 4. A Chrismas tree and the scaffolding to decorate it.
load more comments
(5 replies)
What about this one?
I'm at a loss
e:f;b
Listen here you little shit
I'm at a loss for words
That's the map of the forth level of the dungeon in "Vampires for Hire".
load more comments
(7 replies)
well atleast this post + Comments taught me some Chinese.
And now an English lesson:
The past tense of teach is taught. Teached is not a word.
load more comments
(7 replies)
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
In OPs post, I see a stick figure guy pooping. Jack shit. Zero
Yeah it's a visual metaphor - the emptiness of his bowels = the concept of zero shit in bowels
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›