alt Hacker NewsWhen someone says "it still means zero" about Tamil when responding to comments about Arabic, two languages which have no shared root and little similarity, what does that mean?
I think it means HN is full of misleading ideas.
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The original comment was about one language that borrowed cipher from Arabic (i.e. English) where the word no longer means zero. So my comment was about a different language that also borrowed the word cipher (i.e. Tamil) where it still retains that meaning.
So is Gemini. but from it I gather there might be something interesting about a word that "loops back" (geographically) but evolutionarily speaking it was a reworking of _independent_ discoveries of "emptiness"
Arabic -> Tamil <- Arabic - Sanskrit
Buddy English has no "shared root" with Japanese but we still say sushi.
What does it mean when someone creates a new account for posting contradictory comments?
Isn’t the implication that cipher is a loanword? So language relatedness is irrelevant?
We use “arabic” numerals around the world. So use of an Arabic loan word is unsurprising.