TeTRaPHoBia...

Comments

[Abbie Normal]

And that's why many office towers, hotels and especially hospitals don't have 4th floors.  Because who would want to work, stay or be sick on the floor of death?

[tarsubil]

That's also why many buildings in Asia don't have a fourth wall. Better to have an open side to a building than a wall of death.

[techpriest]

As my wife explained it to me, both 'four' and 'death' are pronounced the same. The pinyin is 'si' and kind of sounds like saying 'tzuh.' There are a lot of these 'sounds like' associations in the language, for example the word for 'llama' (ciao ni ma - literally mud grass horse) pronounced in slightly different tones is 'screw your mother' (ciao ni ma - literally f* you(r) mother)

Fun story: my mother-in-law got a car and the license plate number was possibly one of the unluckiest numbers you could possibly get, IIRC it was 1754. It roughly sounds like saying "I am angry to death."