Japanese does have the phenomenon of being able to ascribe meaning to digits though, even though it's not common to do so in URLs.
In school in japan, kids often learn tricks for memorizing multiplication tables and square roots this way, similar to how US high school students have a song for the roots of a quadratic (-b /- root(b^2-4ac... to the tune of Pop Goes The Weasel).
For example:
sqrt 2 = 1.41421356 (night after night, I watch/take care of someone)
sqrt 5 == 2.236069 (a parrot sings at Mount Fuji)
sqrt 6 == 2.44949 (cook the meat well)
sqrt 7 == 2.64575 (there are no bugs in the cabbage)
sqrt 8 == 2.828 (smile)
Breaking down the first one as an example, sqrt(2) : 一夜一夜に人見頃 (hitoyohitoyonihitomigoro)
hito (一) = 1, hitotsu -- the counter term for nights, like "yi ge" in chinese
yo (夜) = 4, this is the chinese reading of "night/evening". this character is pronounced "ye`" in mandarin. in japanese, in common speech you would say "yoru" for night.
[then repeat 一夜 -- actually sounds poetic and makes it mean "nightly" or "every night"]
ni (に) = 2, the same sound also is a particle indicating place or time
hito (人) = 1, pronounced the same as 1, but the character 人 is a homophone for person. person could also be pronounce jin (chinese reading, close to "ren" in mandarin) which is how it would be pronounced if combined with other chinese characters, like "nihonjin".
mi (見) = 3, in japanese, if you recite the numbers from 1 to 10 you would say "san" for 3, but to count items, you would say "mittsu". for example, the company "mitsubishi" has the number 3 (三) as the first character of it's name and it is pronounced "mi" like in this context. mi could mean a ton of other things too, like "ear" (耳) or "body" or "flesh" (身). This digit has a lot of flexibility.
goro (頃) = 56, 5==go, 6==roku. goro is unambiguously understood to be 56. and "koro" or "goro" describes the duration during which something is occuring -- basically "time".
To me this is very similar to the neumonic that US elementary school kids use to learn the planets: "My very educated mother just served us nine pies".
And just like you can use an alternate sentence like "My Very Energetic Mother Jumps Skateboards Under Nana's Patio", Japanese syllables are rich enough that you could construct totally different phrases to walk through those digits.
Japanese is arguably richer than Chinese for this because there are multiple pronunciations for each digit. 2 can be "fu" (like in Fuji above) or "ni" (a preposition like "in" in root 7).
> -b /- root(b^2-4ac to the tune of Pop Goes the Weasel
Woah. In the UK the most we got was SOHCAHTOA: "Smiles of happiness come after having tankards of ale", or "Some old hag cracked all her teeth on apples".
In school in japan, kids often learn tricks for memorizing multiplication tables and square roots this way, similar to how US high school students have a song for the roots of a quadratic (-b /- root(b^2-4ac... to the tune of Pop Goes The Weasel).
For example:
sqrt 2 = 1.41421356 (night after night, I watch/take care of someone)
sqrt 5 == 2.236069 (a parrot sings at Mount Fuji)
sqrt 6 == 2.44949 (cook the meat well)
sqrt 7 == 2.64575 (there are no bugs in the cabbage)
sqrt 8 == 2.828 (smile)
Breaking down the first one as an example, sqrt(2) : 一夜一夜に人見頃 (hitoyohitoyonihitomigoro)
hito (一) = 1, hitotsu -- the counter term for nights, like "yi ge" in chinese
yo (夜) = 4, this is the chinese reading of "night/evening". this character is pronounced "ye`" in mandarin. in japanese, in common speech you would say "yoru" for night.
[then repeat 一夜 -- actually sounds poetic and makes it mean "nightly" or "every night"]
ni (に) = 2, the same sound also is a particle indicating place or time
hito (人) = 1, pronounced the same as 1, but the character 人 is a homophone for person. person could also be pronounce jin (chinese reading, close to "ren" in mandarin) which is how it would be pronounced if combined with other chinese characters, like "nihonjin".
mi (見) = 3, in japanese, if you recite the numbers from 1 to 10 you would say "san" for 3, but to count items, you would say "mittsu". for example, the company "mitsubishi" has the number 3 (三) as the first character of it's name and it is pronounced "mi" like in this context. mi could mean a ton of other things too, like "ear" (耳) or "body" or "flesh" (身). This digit has a lot of flexibility.
goro (頃) = 56, 5==go, 6==roku. goro is unambiguously understood to be 56. and "koro" or "goro" describes the duration during which something is occuring -- basically "time".
To me this is very similar to the neumonic that US elementary school kids use to learn the planets: "My very educated mother just served us nine pies".
And just like you can use an alternate sentence like "My Very Energetic Mother Jumps Skateboards Under Nana's Patio", Japanese syllables are rich enough that you could construct totally different phrases to walk through those digits.
Japanese is arguably richer than Chinese for this because there are multiple pronunciations for each digit. 2 can be "fu" (like in Fuji above) or "ni" (a preposition like "in" in root 7).
http://m.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/detail/q1223089527
http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/ts/japanese/message/jpnDQs4uCYwDQ...