Once upon a time, Stanislas Dehaene - French neurologist and mathematician, best known for his work on numeral cognition – conducted a study. Participants were supposed to memorize a sequence of 7 numbers, let’s say, 8,2,4,6,7,5,1 within 20 seconds. While English speakers struggled, Chinese participants pretty much nailed it. That’s because Chinese words sound shorter. Our brain is programmed to store numbers in a repetitive loop that lasts for only a short period of time. Chinese speakers are able to fit those 7 numbers into that span of time, while English speakers cannot. According to Dehaene’s book ‘The Number sense’ : “At the age of 4 years old, a child living in the United States who speaks English on average has the ability to count to 15. The same age child living in China has the ability to count to 40, based purely on their efficiency of memorization’.
This is probably the best explanation why China does it better in the kingdom of numbers and the reason behind expressing whole sentences with them (including declaring the feelings!)
Let’s count, then – shall we?!
1.五二零 (wǔ èr líng) - 520: I love you!
Love doesn’t have a price, but in Chinese it does have a number and 520 it is! Because wǔ èr líng sounds a bit-ish like 我爱你 wǒ ài nǐ. And that’s why this coming Sunday – May 20 ( 5.20) China will be celebrating Valentine’s Day!
2. 一三一四 (yī sān yī sì) - 1314: Forever
When read in Chinese,1314 (yī sān yī sì) sounds similar to 一生一世 (yī shēng yī shì) — “one life, one world.” This means “for the rest of my life” or “forever.”
Now, if you put #1 and #2 together - 520 1314 - 我爱你一生一世 (wǒ ài nǐ yī shēng yī shì) — I love you forever!
3. 二零一三 (èr líng yī sān) - 2013: I’ll love you forever
520 1314” takes too much time. There is in fact an even quicker way to tell someone that you’re going to love them forever: 2013.
When read in Chinese, the numbers sound reasonably close to 爱你一生 (ài nǐ yī shēng) — “love you one life!”
4. 二 (er) or 二百五 (er bai wu) - 250 : Idiot
If you find yourself in deep need of pointing out someone’s stupidity quickly, just make the bold statement 你是二吗 nǐ shì er ma? ( more ‘friendly version – ‘Are you dumb?!’) or – spice it up – 你他妈是二百五吗 nǐ tā mā shì èr bǎi wǔ ma?! – Are you f*#@ing dumb?!’
In fact, there is a historical background behind this one!
In ancient China, coins were strung together in stacks of 1000. It was considered modest and politely self-deprecating for scholars to refer to themselves as “half a stack”—in other words, “500.” Half of 500 is, of course, 250, so 二百五 (èr bǎi wǔ) came to refer to someone who’s so dumb they aren’t even half a stack!
5. 五五五 (wǔ wǔ wǔ) - 555: Crying noise
So if you 520 someone but they don’t 520 you back, you might indulge yourself in some 555 online sessions – which means a lot of tears will be shed in your texts, as wǔ wǔ wǔ stands for crying.
You may have noticed by now that Chinese number slang tends towards hyperbole. In a world where lifelong dedication to someone can be expressed with a small string of numbers, even the mildest disappointment can call for something that would otherwise be considered extreme.
514 read in Chinese (with 一, or “one,” read as “yao”) sounds like 我要死 (wǒ yào sǐ) — “I want to die!
So you’re going through the stages of grief and have passed from tears to fury. Got to be a quick number slang way of expressing this, right? 7456 sounds close enough to 气死我了 (qì sǐ wǒ le) — “you’re angering me to death!”
8 .六 六 六 (liu liu liu ) - 666 Genius!
No devil involved here, at least in China. Instead, it is the phonetic ‘brother’ of the word liu 溜- proficient, adept. And the more you feel someone nails something, the more 6666 you may shower on him/her.
9. 救救我 (jiù jiù wǒ) - 995 :Help me!
No it’s not an emergency number in China (although that could be a good idea). However, quite close… 救 jiù means ‘save, assist’ and it’s one more example of a smooth phono-numeric transition, with the sentence ‘Help help me!’ becoming a number. And who said Chinese people are the masters of complications?
10. 叭叭 六 ( bā bā liu ) - 886 : Bye Bye !
Once you come to China, you will never get rid of the double ‘bye’. At least we won’t – seems indispensable.
Bā bā liù” sounds close enough to “bye-bye le,” the le being the Chinese grammar particle 了, which is used at the end of verbs to indicate past tense or a change in status. A (very) rough approximation of the English meaning would be “Bye-bye then!”