Visit literally anywhere remotely referring to the Chinese language on the internet today and be told that this day is (yet another) Valentines Day in the Middle Kingdom, on account that the pronunciation of this date sounds like “I love you in Chinese”. Rubbish.
It doesn’t matter which way you choose to say today’s date in Chinese. You could say “5.20”. You could say “20 May” several different ways. And none of them, absolutely none of them, sound remotely like “I love you”.
But 99.9 percent of the ever-so-wise internet would have us believe different. As an example, the blog, ninchanise.com, states, “When you write May 20th in numbers, it’s written 5.20. When you pronounce the numbers 5. 2. 0 in Chinese, 五二零 wǔ èr líng, they sound very close to the words 我爱你 wǒ ài nǐ. See? They don’t sound the same, but they sound quite similar, and that’s enough!”.
Quite similar? Give me a break. Ok, ok, that’s a small blog. But even the mighty Wikipedia would have us think likewise. In its entry for “Chinese Internet slang”, the online mega depository states, “520 – ‘I love you’. 520 (pinyin: wǔ’èrlíng) represents 我爱你 (pinyin: wǒ ài nǐ)”.
Now of course any foreigner in China who has unwaxed their ears of late can tell you they don’t sound similar at all. And that’s because these online references are all pointing to entirely the wrong concept.
The fact is the association with today’s date came later, so let’s take “20 May” out of the equation.
To their credit, the aforementioned blog is correct in saying, “520 originally started as a slang word used by the Chinese online as a shortcut to say ‘I love you’ in Chinese, like ILY in English”.
However, saying “five-two-zero” still does not sound like “I love you”.
But that’s unless you say “five hundred and twentieth”, for which the Chinese is in fact “五百廿” (wǔ bǎi niàn), unquestionably sounding like “wǒ ài nǐ”.
Interestingly, and away from today’s amorous associations, that final character, “廿” (niàn), is most commonly used by bankers, when they can’t be bothered with the more complicated anti-fraud numeral, “念”, which also means to think of, recall, study, or even to to give somebody a right-old tongue-lashing.
For more such wonderful idiosyncrasies from the Chinese language, see the upcoming June issue of The Nanjinger magazine, with the theme of “Vernacular”.
