In Japanese, the word san (さん) means “three” and kyuu (きゅう) means “nine.” Said together, the words sound like English “thank you,” so back in the 1990s, when pagers were all the rage among Japanese teens, typing 999 was a quick way to punningly thank someone. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “999 Times I San Kyuu”
In the pre-cell phone era of the late 1980s in Japan, electronic pagers were all the rage.
You know, you wore these devices on your belt or you kept them in your pocket, and they buzzed or beeped when somebody called your phone number.
And then a little screen would show the number that the.
Collar had punched in, hoping that you’d call back. But high schoolers very cleverly learned to key in numbers that had meanings of their own.
For example, the numbers 999 meant thank you.
And the reason is because if you want to communicate the idea of three nines in Japanese, you can say sankyu. San is three and kyu is nine. So it’s a cross-lingual pun.
Oh, it’s because it sounds vaguely like thank you.
That’s very cool.
Yeah.
I think that’s something we should be using in English instead of TY, you know, just 999.
It’s not cool.
That’s very cool.
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