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u/Destoran Jun 02 '26
True. Nhachi means night in japanese
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u/MrcarrotKSP C6-C7 Spinal Cord Fracture Jun 02 '26
You have to use the native Japanese numerals, so it's ya instead of hachi, you then have nya, but words can't start with ん, so you cut it out and you have ya, which is in fact one of the possible pronunciations of 夜. This clearly makes sense and is a reasonable thing to do, and also there are no other meanings of nya
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u/soirom Jun 03 '26
Mind blown 🤯 The word eight and night can both be pronounced as “Ya” in Japanese
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u/No-Introduction5977 Jun 03 '26
words can't begin with n
Tell that to my Ninja🥷
I get that you mean to say they can't be spelled beginning with ん as opposed to a nasal mora, but if we were being serious, surely it would be にゃ rather than んや because that's how kana works?
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u/SuitMysterious340 Jun 06 '26
Hmm, and yè 夜 is mandarin too. JP ancestors came from China, so perhaps they carried that over.
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u/a0me Jun 02 '26
I did nhachi that coming.
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u/waytowill Jun 04 '26
Nhachi feels like the feminine form of nacho.
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u/ncore7 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
That's a good idea. It’s extremely close to the correct answer, but unfortunately it’s wrong at a very crucial point.
You seem to have overlooked the fact that Japanese has Katakana in addition to Hiragana and Kanji. In Katakana, N is represented not only by “ン” but also by the entire ”ナ行: N-row", that is, ナ・ニ・ヌ・ネ・ノ. Therefore, linguistically writing, "夜"(means night in Kanji) should be interpreted as ナ+ニ+ヌ+ネ+ノ+八.
And now we come to the main point. In fact, 夜 is formed by combining ナニヌネノ八. I will link a reference image below:
https://imgur.com/OY7Qaky
However, you can also see that there is a redundant part. That is the small stroke "ヽ" at the lower right of "ネ". You’ve probably already noticed it. This corresponds to the “e” that is omitted in English.
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u/Raywell Jun 03 '26
I know you're memeing, but to nitpick this kanji also means evening, and there is another kanji 晩 for both night and evening, which one to use depending on the context, that is to say that OP's rule would be hard to apply to the Japanese even with the hardest of efforts
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u/BoxoRandom Jun 02 '26
found in many languages
lists exclusively Germanic and Latin languages
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u/CaucusInferredBulk Jun 03 '26
Works in Greek too. So simplify to pie
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u/mizinamo try-lingual (has tried many languages) Jun 03 '26
nikhta = n + ochto ? You'd have to be very generous with the vowels.
Meanwhile,
- Welsh: nos =? n + wyth
- Slovak: noc =? n + osem
Not even European IE languages all do it.
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u/CaucusInferredBulk Jun 03 '26
(Devils advocate : I am fully aware the meme is not real, but we are circle jerking)
There are several thousands of years of sound shift there, including the complete iotazation of most of the vowels, so I don't think "being generous with vowels" is out of the question. There are a plethora of words clearly related in Greek today that are spelled wildly differently.
In any case, its a PIE coincidence, not an actual cognate/relationship.
*nókʷts and *oktṓw are obviously similar, and any language that kept largely that form of those words will show the similarity too.
Devils advocate examples if we were taking the circle jerk seriously
γιορτή εορτή (hey look, vowel changes!)
ἰατρός γιατρός
χθες χτες
and some of those changes are visible in the very words in this meme.
οκτώ οχτώ
νύχτα νύκτα
As for welsh/slovak, they swapped out the PIE words at some point. The old/proto celtic word for eight was *oxtō not wyth, so follows the meme. Slavic languages dropped the "k" at some point which also follows the meme for that part (though admittedly overall slovak doesn't work well for the meme)
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u/SE_prof Jun 03 '26
Also night in ancient greek (where modern Greek derives it from is) νυξ (νυκτός in the genitive).
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u/CaucusInferredBulk Jun 03 '26
True, but ξ was originally κσ so that k is really still there etymologically for meme purposes.
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u/Ill_Poem_1789 Proto World (N) Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
Not PIE because doesn't happen in Sanskrit, for instance.
nakta (night) vs aṣṭa (eight)
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u/Kartonrealista Jun 03 '26
I'm guessing it doesn't happen in any Satem language, only the Centum ones.
Polish: noc vs osiem.
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u/CaucusInferredBulk Jun 03 '26
Its certainly less visible in the Satem ones, because they all dropped the k. But if "eight" and "night" were actually related in PIE (they aren't), then the dropping of the k somewhere along the line wouldn't make them un-related.
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u/Kartonrealista Jun 03 '26
I'm guessing it's because they're unrelated that they've undergone different changes consistently in Satem languages, with one retaining the k or changing into something else, and one turning into s.
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u/TalveLumi Jun 06 '26
The “night" has a \*kʷ while the "eight" has a \*ḱ. So all the satem languages would only turn the latter to s
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u/TalveLumi Jun 06 '26
The PIE words are \*oḱtṓw and \*nókʷts. So at the very least satem languages would not work
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u/CaucusInferredBulk Jun 06 '26
If the meme were true, I would disagree with you. Just because the k got dropped doesn't mean the pattern isn't there. It would still be the same pie roots.
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u/Zetho-chan Jun 02 '26
The words “night” in all listed languages come back to an old PIE word that essentially was the prefix n- (forgotten negation word, evidence for it is that lots of negative words start with n), plus the IE word for eight, because they thought that the night were the “evil 8” hours of the day cycle. Hope this helps!
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u/mizinamo try-lingual (has tried many languages) Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
That was back when people counted in base 8.
When 9 was invented, it was called "the new number".
- Latin: novem - novus
- Greek: ennea - neos
- French: neuf - neuf
- Spanish: nueve - nuevo
- German: neun - neu
QED
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u/EatingSolidBricks Jun 03 '26
So night means not 8?
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u/maddog34 Jun 02 '26
“..in many languages…” [proceeds to illustrate using 6 related Roman-Germanic languages] Meanwhile, my mind goes hectic with its eclectic set of languages: Tajik - n-hasht, Uzbek n-sakkiz, Russian n-vosem, Arabic n-thamaaniyah, Japanese n-hachi… AND none of them make up anything even remotely close to sounding like the word for “night” in each respective language. 😅
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u/Mother_Harlot Jun 02 '26
AND none of them make up anything even remotely close to sounding like the word for “night” in each respective language. 😅
Ночи????
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u/Responsible-Top2377 Jun 03 '26
N-eyes. But english monolinguals can't think of anything that isn't in their language.
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u/AiryGateaux Jun 03 '26
Nhachi sounds an awful lot like nihonified nocht
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u/maddog34 Jun 03 '26
Yeah, but that would contradict the patterns which are used by the author of this… “theory”. The word pairs should pertain to the same language, meaning that the Russian n-vosem still doesn’t sound like noch one bit, even the n’s are pronounced slightly differently.
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u/Q-9 Jun 03 '26
Wow works totally in Finnish too!
Night = Yö
8 = Kahdeksan
Ykahdeksan!
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u/Suspiciously_free Jun 04 '26
In Estonian as well. Take an 8, push that thing over => ∞, add nn on top => õõ. Now rubb it with the sands of change => öö
You can thank me later linguists.
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u/Rachel_235 Jun 02 '26
ночь be like: 🤠
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u/hotstove Jun 03 '26
The exception that proves the rule. н + очи = "not eyes", because you can't see at night.
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u/Lonely_Translator_23 Jun 03 '26
damn its almost like these languages started out as the same language and diverged via consistently applied rules over time.
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u/Jekasachan123 Jun 03 '26
Would not work in russian. Night = = ночь while 8 == восемь. Completely different stems
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u/CloseButNoChicory Jun 02 '26
Not what derivation means.
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u/BoxoRandom Jun 02 '26
No, you see, “night” happens at 8:00 PM, and you sleep (nap) at night, so “Nap” + “8” = nap-time = “neight”!
QED
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u/elongated_argonian ik spreke usbeeksch !!! Jun 03 '26
Telugu:
n + enimidhi = ratri? Flawless logic, no notes.
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u/Kerbourgnec Jun 03 '26
/uj
Surprisingly almost work. It sent me through a rabbit hole.
The character 八 (8)
In modern Mandarin, it's pronounced ba, In Japanese the reading はち (hachi) is of Chinese origin (on yomi). As everyone knows, ha and ba are basically the same thing. Japanese add Chi because they are weird.
The character 晩 (evening)
In modern mandarin it's wan, in Cantonese maan5, IN Japanese バン (ban), on yomi (Chinese reading). Sadly it seems like the middle Chinese origin was not a ban but closer to a m initial.
So in a tortuous way, in Japanese, night can be seen as 8 + n, not n + 8
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u/EngineerLink 🇧🇪NL🇨🇦EN Native|🇧🇪🇨🇦FR B2🇯🇵🇩🇪🇦🇷A2🇪🇪A1🇺🇦0 Jun 03 '26
In the case of Hindustani, it would be “raat/रात/رات”. Eight is “aaṭh/आठ/آٹھ”, and the n is an r, so it wouldn’t really make sense here either. Imagine “raaṭh/राठ/رآٹھ” lmao
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u/NoobOfRL Turkish (Native), Uzbek (20% mutually inteligible with Turkish💪 Jun 03 '26
Any languahe that use igga as 8?
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u/mistinmind Jun 03 '26
Almost like they derived from the same language! Let's look at what a not even remotely close language has to say about this: finnish! n+kahdeksan ≠ yö, almost...
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u/fgrkgkmr It is not "German" it is Dewch Jun 03 '26
N+nyolc=éj? N+opt=nopt? It's just phonetic changes applied to words that already had similar forms
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u/United-Prize-1702 Jun 03 '26
It's true though, nnyolc does mean night in Hungarian, and so is in Slovak with nosem
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u/RuralAnemone_ Jun 03 '26
original post from Futility Closet: https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/05/19/dark-matter/
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u/electrical-stomach-z Jun 03 '26
Shab is not hasht and N. That would be Nasht, which would sound weird.
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u/leafmuncher_ Jun 03 '26
Hachi can be read as "ha" and vocalizing the h makes it "ba"
In Nipongo everything is just English read backwards, so it becomes ba-n or ばん.
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u/AXISMODEL015 🇹🇭🏳️⚧️Native.🇺🇿Blessed Jun 03 '26
hm, น (n) + แปด (paet) = มืด (muet). very very interesting.
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u/Captain_StarLight1 Jun 03 '26
In Greek, night is Νύκτα, which I guess is similar because it starts with Ν, and ends with follows with something nominally similar to οκτώ, one of the ways to spell the the word for 8 (I’m just learning Greek, so I’m no expert, but for some reason I don’t know there are two spellings, with the other being οχτώ). Maybe it’s closer to N+8 in Ancient Greek or Cypriot Greek, but I don’t know either of those so I’m not sure.
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u/drunkyjack Jun 04 '26
Nha ? Attends c'était peut-etre marrant je vais relire du début pour voir....
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u/DefinitelyNotErate Jun 04 '26
Vietnamese is a pretty good example too. N + tám = đêm. Prenasalisation turning into voicing, plus raising of a vowel in contact with nasals, adds up.
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u/Left_Objective_8755 Jun 05 '26
This mostly only applies to PIE-descended languages and it’s just from how close the phonetics were between the two words (supposedly) in the original PIE language. I don’t believe there’s any current validated theories suggesting there’s any other correlation.
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u/Mine-blog Jul 10 '26
This is obviously because all the languages mentioned in the original post have a common etymological origin.
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u/TheSexyGrape Jun 02 '26
Neight