Amazing. What’s up with the number 4?

And 14, 23 or 24?

I think #4 means death…

“Four” sounds similar to “death” in chinese.

The number “4″ sounds very close to the word for death… In mandarin it is pronounced “si”, and is the fourth tone. There are four “tones” in mandarin, or different ways of stressing the sound. “Death” is “si”, but it is the third tone.

And I suppose that’s why there also isn’t “14″ and “24″. I don’t know what’s wrong with “23″ though. I have never heard of a superstition involving 23, and I couldn’t find anything about one on wiki.

>> I think #4 means death…

Close but wrong
no, pronouciation-wise it just SOUNDS like “die/death”

don’t get why 23, 24 are missing thou.

The word in chinese for four is 四 pronounced as “shi.” The word in chinese for death is (if I remember correctly) 死 also pronounced as “shi.” The similarity between the word’s pronounciation make it difficult to determine whether the speaker means “four” or “death” aside from actually seeing it written out or taking it contextually.

Also for the floors 14 and 24, the pronounciation are “references” to death. Fourten, written as 十四 sounds similar to the pronounciation of the words for “certain death.” The number 24 is similar to the situation of the number 14, except that it sounds like “easily certain death.”

I don’t really know the reason for 13 or 23.

#4 doesn’t mean death. It sounds like death. The tonal sound of “Four” and “Death” are almost the same; spoken to a non native speaker and it’s hard to identify outside of the context. This is why it’s bad luck.

‘Su’ - the word for number 4 sounds almost exactly like the word for ‘death’. esp in hospitals there’s no number 4! dunno about 13 and 23 tho bro!

Number four, 四 （si) is the same pronunciation as death, 死. You’ll only ever seen tourists driving rental cars with 4 in the license plate.

I like how the number of responses is “lucky”, too.

http://i23.tinypic.com/140lszm.png

4 and the word for death are both pronounced “si,” so people are superstitious about it. I’m not sure about the lack of 13 and 23 though. Maybe 13 is an adaptation of the western superstition, but 23?

To expand on what JWT said, the word Si2 is ‘four’ (#2 means 2nd pinyin tone) and Si3 is ‘death’, both are spelled the same but have different tones, so the chinese thinks that’s bad luck to say something that sounds remotely near to ‘death’ Lol.

woW, as I was writing my comment, there were only 4 responses; after I post, there’s 14 responses?? yea, anyways, that’s my 2 cents — what all the others are saying…

>>woW, as I was writing my comment, there were only 4 responses; after I post, there’s 14 responses??

power of the Internet, dude

Simple… 23 is 13 + 10, and therefore unlucky.
24 is 14 + 10, and 14 is 4 + 10, and unlucky as well.
A bit extreme, I would say. Don’t they usually only skip 4?

Wow, Im amazed at how many people are putting in their (wrong) two cents! The pronunciations for “4″ and “death” (四 and 死，for those w/ asian fonts installed) sound similar although they are not the same. 4 is “si4″, which is not like the spanish “si” but more like “suh,” and you need to say it with a quickly lowering tone. Death, on the other hand, is “si3″, which means that it has the same pronunciation except instead of the quickly descending tone you speak it with a very low, rising tone. Similar, but not the same at all to a native speaker.

However, superstitions are strong in China. 13 is pretty much just borrowed from the West.

duh, the 23 thing is so easy! i think i just solved the puzzle.

when writing out any numbers 11-19 in chinese characters, you write them out as “ten-one,” “ten-two,” “ten-three,” so forth.

similarly, when writing out the number 23 in chinese characters, you have to spell write it out as “two-ten-three”- as in you are using the number 13 when you write out number 23.

at least that would be my uneducated guess for it.

In Flying Star Feng Shui, when the numbers 2 and 3 appear together, it is not considered a good combination. That is because 2 represents big earth energy and 3 represents wood. Since wood energy is believed to control and destroy earth energy, it would mean that there would be much conflict in a space which employs this combination.

The numbers 2 and 5 are also considered an inauspicious combination, so I’m surprised that they have a 25th floor. Usually in a home where this combination appears, it is believed that the occupant could expect major health problems or even a fatal accident, unless a metal cure was introduced to break up the heavy earth energy that the two numbers represent.

Last semester, one of my students received a final grade of 14, and he came into the office to beg me to change it. One of my Chinese colleagues explained that 14 means “going to die”.

@TD: “4″ is si4 (fourth tone, down).

Yeah, 4, 14, and 24 for the Chinese (and the Japanese incidentally, who have the same superstition, for the same reason), 13 for us and 23 for who knows what reason. Weird.

If I remember correctly, I remember my Japanese Teacher from high School mentioning something about numbers ending in ‘3′ being considered as unlucky. I don’t know where it comes from.. maybe a spin-off from English views of the number 13?

May be the missing 23th floor has nothing to do with superstituion? Is it a fire separation floor or plant rooms floor so that they do not want people to go there through escalator?

so now we know that the word death sounds something like number four …
how many times do we need to be told …?
hehe …

I stayed for several months in a very nice hotel in Taipei (Sherwood) with an elevator just like that. The fourth-floor is missing because of the death association as explained above. Thirteen is missing because of, at least in my hotel, the large number of American/Westerners staying there and our fear of the number 13. Interestingly, we moved out of the hotel to a very nice apartment in a very nice neighborhood in Taipei, yep, on the fourth floor because, in part, that no (or very few) Taiwanese wanted to live on the fourth floor (though our neighbors were).

On my opinion,
3-4 is a duplex,
12-13-14 is a 3 floors appartement,
22-23-24 is the same !
and may be, 25 is a multi floor appartement to.
What do you think about this ? Nicolas

I live in Malaysia, on the 14 floor, they didn’t erase the floor button on the elevator, they just make my unit called 13a instead of 14

Interesting how numbers in other languages are un-lucky or bad omens. I never even thought about it.

I am SO lucky to not be burdened with silly superstitions.

Knock on wood.

I once lived in apartment #12A of a building. It was called ‘12A’ because it was between #12 and #14, but the owner didn’t want to have apartment #13.

For all numbers with four such as 14, 24, 34, 44, etc. you have to write the number 4. Like-wise with 13. It’s the combination of 10 and 3 or 4 as stated before. All though 13 may only be in hong Kong or other American tourist locations. Either that or it’s similar to the Christian superstition. In Christianity (Which is where unlucky 13 began for western cultures) the number was rejected because it symbolized the 13 cycles of the moon; the menstrual cycle. It was a numerical symbol in goddess worshiping cultures where women where regarded above men. However, in Christianity, man is dominant to woman and same in the Chinese culture. These superstitions are also present in Japan as well, but the the numbers aren’t excluded just the pronunciation changed. From “Shi” to “Yon” for numbers 14 and higher except for where 4 is by itself. So the elevators are left intact, except for number 4. As far as I know though, Japan doesn’t have a problem with 13.