|
Pinyin | wàn (fourth tone) |
| English | 10,000; ten thousand; countless |
| Pronounced rather like 'one' |
This character is used not only in counting but in many idiomatic expressions for extremes for example in 'Wanli Changcheng' the Great Wall.
It's a bit like in English when we say 'million' to represent an unachievably high number such as 'one in a million chance' or 'not a million miles away'.
Many translations will render wan as 'ten thousand' when a term like 'forever', 'infinite', 'uncountable' or 'myriad' gets more to the sense of it as in the proclamation
'may the Emperor live for ten thousand years' really means 'long live the Emperor'.
The character is one 'borrowed' from another originally sounding one, in this case 'wan' for scorpion.
| wàn |
nián |
 |
 |
| ten thousand |
years |
= forever; eternity |
