The word "twenty" is believed to be familiar to everyone. But are you really reading it right?
Many people will pronounce "廿" as "twenty", but in fact, the correct pronunciation of this character is "niàn". You may ask, why doesn't "廿" pronounce "gān"? There's a story here.
During the development of Chinese characters, in order to facilitate counting, people invented some simplified characters to represent numbers. For example, "卅" means "thirty" and "卌" means "forty". Then, "廿" is a simplified word for "twenty".
You see, the word "廿" is prefix "艹" at the top, and the word "gan" is at the bottom. In ancient times, the prefix "艹" usually denoted something related to plants, while the word "gan" denoted the taste of sweetness. Therefore, some people think that the word "twenty" means "twenty as sweet as a plant". This is certainly an interesting explanation, but it is not the real reason for the pronunciation of the character "廿".
In fact, the pronunciation of the character "廿" is not directly related to its glyph. In ancient times, the pronunciation of the character "廿" was "niàn", which is the same as the word "reading". It is said that this pronunciation is because the character "廿" was often used to mean "twenty years" in ancient times, and the word "nian" has the meaning of missing, missing. Therefore, people pronounce the character "廿" as "niàn", which means nostalgia and memories of the past 20 years.
However, over time, the pronunciation of the character "廿" gradually changed. In some local dialects, the pronunciation of the character "廿" has become "er shí", which is the pronunciation of "twenty". This may be due to the fact that in colloquial language, people gradually pronounce "niàn" as "er shí" for ease of pronunciation.
Nowadays, the correct pronunciation of the character "廿" is "niàn", but in some regional dialects, it is still pronounced as "twenty". It's like a fun language game that makes us feel the diversity and change of language.
Like many things in life, sometimes we choose one way because of habit or convenience, but it is not necessarily the right way. On the road of pursuing knowledge and truth, we must have the courage to question and keep learning in order to discover more wonderful.
So, the next time you see the word "廿", stop casually pronouncing it as "twenty", try to pronounce "niàn" and feel the unique charm of this character!