lucky numbers bring no good luck[cs]
many people believe that some numbers are lucky numbers and
some are bad n
umbers. they claim that lucky numbers can bring good luck
while bad numbers can
bring disasters. that is why we can see the number 8 on most
price tags in our c
ountry. some people pay much more money for their telephone
numbers or car plate
numbers with an 8 or 18 in them. do the socalled lucky numbers bring good luc
k?
actually numbers have nothing to do with luck. people believe
8 is lucky n
umber only because the sound of eight happens to be identical
to that of that wo
rd fo
r “make a fortune” in cantonese. this very coincidence may
not exist in other
la
nguages. but similar coincidences do occur in different
languages. words in natu
re are only arbitrary symbols used for communication. for the
very same referent
whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
凡是值得做的事就值得做好。
or idea, different languages may use different sounds.
shakespeare said, “if we
call a rose by any other name, it would smell sweet as well.”
this means that
t
here is no intrinsic connection between sound and sense. in
our culture, on cert
ain occasions, even numbers symbolize auspice while odd
numbers are somehow asso
ciated with the opposite.
in a word, numbers are only numbers that stand for nothing
but quantity. therefore, it is unreasonable to believe in lucky
numbers.
