To be fair, zero is a complicated number
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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We do know why, it's because death 死 and four 四 have the same pronunciation sǐ in Chinese (and shi in Japanese).
homophones are common in Chinese and Japanese because there's only so many potential readings of a hieroglyph, but each one has a different meaning
Every language has homophones. Even before tones were created, sometimes there are just coincidences. As far as I know, there's nothing to suggest that the number four and death are inherently related in some way. No one is suggesting that knead and need are related even though they sound the same, and lead (the act of leading) and lead (the metal) may happen to share a spelling but they're still completely different words.