[sundarurfriend]

In Tamil, it still means a zero. It's usually pronounced like 'cyber' though, because Tamil doesn't have the 'f'/'ph' sound natively.

[aiuu]

When 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.

[Isamu]

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.

[sundarurfriend]

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.

[gsf_emergency_6]

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0#Etymology

[Razengan]

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?