4 ms·
> Arrange the given block, if necessary, so that no ciphers [zeros] occur in its interior. I forgot that cipher used to have a different meaning: zero, via Ara
by esafak 11mo ago
> Arrange the given block, if necessary, so that no ciphers [zeros] occur in its interior.
I forgot that cipher used to have a different meaning: zero, via Arabic. In some languages it means digit.
- pinkmuffinere 11mo agolol I never made that connection — in Turkish, zero is sıfır, which does sound a lot like cipher. Also, password is şifre, which again sounds similar. Looking online, apparently the path is sifr (Arabic, meaning zero) -> cifre (French, first meaning zero, then any numeral, then coded message) -> şifre (Turkish, code/cipher)
- ls-a 11mo ago[flagged]
- drivebyhooting 11mo agoThis doesn’t sound right. What about Chinese?
- jjtheblunt 11mo agoi'm quite sure the person was joking
- astrange 11mo agoBasque and Pirahā are the good ones.
- rmunn 11mo ago> All world languages are a deviation from Arabic Spouse of a linguist here. That is absolutely not true. To summarize a LOT, there are multiple languages that share common roots, which linguists classify into language "families". If you go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_families#Spoken_language_families https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_families#Spok... and sort the list by number of current speakers (which adds up to far more than the population of the world because so many people speak two or more languages), you'll find the top five language families are Indo-European (which includes most European languages, including English), Sino-Tibetan (which includes Chinese), Atlantic-Congo (which includes Bantu and many other languages spoken in Africa, most of which you probably won't have heard of unless you're a linguist or you live in Africa), Afroasiatic (which includes Arabic), and Austronesian (which includes Tagalog, which you might know by the name Filipino). It might be possible to claim that the Afroasiatic languages are all derived from Arabic, but the only influence that the Arabic language has had on Indo-European languages such as English is via loanwords (like algebra, for example). This does not make English a derivative of Arabic any more than Japanese (which has borrowed several English words such as カメラ, "kamera", from camera) is a derivative of English. Borrowing a word, or even a few dozen words, from another language does not make it a derivative. English, while it gleefully borrows loanwords from everywhere, is derived from French and German (or, to be more accurate, from Anglo-Norman and Proto-Germanic).
- awesome_dude 11mo agoCan I also add that "Arabic numbers" - the numbers we use today, are actually of Indian origin, the Arabs translated the Indian logic/math texts into Arabic, and Western society used the Arabic translations (and additions like those of "Algorithm") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Arabic_numeral_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Arabic_numeral_s...
- bigstrat2003 11mo agoAlso as long as we are going down the terminology nerd rabbit hole: it's Arabic numerals, not numbers. Numbers refers to the abstract concept, numerals refers to the method one uses to write them down.
- awesome_dude 11mo agoYeah - I quoted that to show that it was normal usage rather than technical correctness - I also did the same for the name that I didn't have the correct spelling for as I wrote the comment - not sure if I should update it (with your input) or to leave it and let people work down the thread
- inopinatus 11mo agoit's a cardinal rule
- ls-a 10mo agoIf you want to go down the terminology nerd rabbit hole, which I think is the correct thing to do, it's not even called Arabic language, it's called The Un-ambiguous Arabic Tongue (my translation of اللسان العربي المبين). Language (which comes from the word لغة) is a bad word, it means "idle chatter". Tongue is the correct term for someone who knows what they're talking about. Modern Arabic (even what is referred to as Classical Arabic) is a deviation from The Un-ambiguous Arabic Tongue. A lot of ignorant people think that the Quran is poetry when in fact it is in The Un-ambiguous Arabic Tongue, which again many people don't know (or intentionally hide!). The Arabs who spoke that tongue eloquently back then denounced poetry and poets (that's why when they wanted to curse at the prophets they called the prophets "crazy poets". Read the Quran for reference) To them poets are crazy, and the Quran was chosen by Allah to come down in that specific tongue, hence the Quran also denounces poetry.
- celaleddin 11mo agoNice! Imagine the second meaning going back to Arabic and now it's a full loop! It can even override the original meaning given enough time and popularity (not especially for "zero", but possibly for another full-loop word).
- lupire 11mo ago0 is a full loop!
- cgio 11mo agoThe Turkish password word may be the same used for signature? I suspect so, because in Greek we have the Greek word for signature but also a Turkish loan word τζίφρα (djifra).
- pinkmuffinere 11mo agoHmm i don’t think that one is related in Turkish — i only know of “imza” as signature, but there could also be other variants.
- esafak 11mo agoimza is signature while şifre is password. I imagine the conflation occurred because signatures are used like passwords for authentication...
- NextHendrix 11mo agoLikewise, the monogram of the sitting english monarch (as seen on postboxes and so forth) is the "Royal Cypher". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_cypher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_cypher
- elbear 11mo agoIn Romanian: - cifru -> cipher - cifră -> digit
- cryptonector 11mo agoIn Spanish: - cifrar -> to encipher - cifra -> digit
- elbear 10mo agoI wasn't sure how encipher is in Romanian (it's not common), it's "a cifra". The infinitive in Romanian puts "a" in front of the verb, so it's very close to Spanish.
- jacquesm 11mo agoDutch too: "Cijfer", German, "Ziffer", French: "Chifre", Spanish: "Cifra".
- estomagordo 11mo agoSwedish: "Siffra"
- sundarurfriend 11mo agoIn Tamil, it still means a zero. It's usually pronounced like 'cyber' though, because Tamil doesn't have the 'f'/'ph' sound natively.
- aiuu 11mo agoWhen 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.
- Razengan 11mo agoBuddy 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?
- stackghost 11mo agoEnglish's superpower is readily absorbing new words from other languages. Sushi is now an English word. So is hummus, etc.
- _0ffh 11mo agoIf that's a superpower, it's a staggeringly common superpower.
- kergonath 11mo ago> Sushi is now an English word. Eyeballing the Wikipedia page, and out of the only scripts I could read, I counted 72 languages that used a direct transcription of "sushi". It isn’t as much a superpower as a thing languages do in general.
- Isamu 11mo agoIsn’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.
- vee-kay 11mo agoFun fact: zero and numerals were not invented by the Arabs. The Arabs learnt the concept & use of mathematical zero, numerals, decimal system, mathematical calculations, etc. from the ancient Hindus/Indians. And from the Arabs, the Europeans learnt it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu-Arabic_numeral_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu-Arabic_numeral_system Persian scholar Al Khwarizmi translated and used the Hindu/Indian numerals (including concept of mathematical zero) and "Sulba Sutras" (Hindu/Indian methods of mathematical problem solving) into the text Al-Jabr, which the Europeans translated as "Algebra" (yup, that branch of mathematics that all schoolkids worldwide learn from kindergarten).
- gsf_emergency_6 11mo agoThe word used to mean "empty" (and not algebraic zero) in both Arabic and Sanskrit. https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/MathEd/index.php/2022/08/25/the-men-who-invented-zero/#:~:text=The%20ancient%20Hindu%20symbol%2C%20the%20%E2%80%9CBindi%E2%80%9D%20or%20%E2%80%9CBindu%E2%80%9D%2C%20a%20circle%20with%20a%20dot%20in%20the%20centre%20symbolised%20this%20and%20was%20what%20probably%20led%20to%20the%20use%20of%20an%20oval%20as%20the%20symbol%20for%20the%20Sunya. https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/MathEd/index.php/2022/08/25/the...
- vee-kay 11mo agoOrigin trivia: Originating from the Sanskrit word for zero शून्य (śuṇya), via the Arabic word صفر (ṣifr), the word "cipher" spread to Europe as part of the Arabic numeral system during the Middle Ages. https://www.etymonline.com/word/cipher https://www.etymonline.com/word/cipher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cipher#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cipher#Etymology Fun fact: The Sanskrit word for mathematical zero and emptiness/voidness is the same: Shunya (शून्य). In fact, mathematicians are of the opinion that ancient Indians were among the first to understand the concept of mathematical zero because they understood the meaning of empty/void (Shunyata). Dhyana (meditation by focusing on voidness/stillness, away from random intrusive thoughts) is an aspect of Yoga (world's oldest active fitness discipline). Another fun fact: The world's oldest recorded cipher (as an example of cryptography/ encryption) is the ancient Indian epic Ramayana by Maharshi Valmiki. It has 24000 verses (Sanskrit shlokas), and the first syllable (akshara) of each 1000th verse/shloka forms a series of 24 syllables that form the sacred Sri Gayatri Mantra. Proofs of oldest records mathematical zero being of Indian origin, are available.. https://thebetterindia.com/270912/chaturbhuj-temple-in-gwalior-has-worlds-oldest-zero-symbol/ https://thebetterindia.com/270912/chaturbhuj-temple-in-gwali... World's oldest known evidence of Mathematical Zero and numerals - ancient inscription on wall of Chaturbhuj temple in Gwalior, India. https://www.glam.ox.ac.uk/article/carbon-dating-finds-bakhshali-manuscript-contains-oldest-recorded-origins-symbol-zero https://www.glam.ox.ac.uk/article/carbon-dating-finds-bakhsh... Bakhshali manuscript (stored in Oxford) from ancient India/Bharat - is the world's oldest text having Mathematical Zero and equations.
- blarg1 11mo agoThat explains Major Zero and his organisation Cipher in the metal gear series