Why not also teach the other meanings of 零点?

[M4tthi4s91]

I’m German and my boyfriend is American and at the moment visiting his family there. Sometimes we videochat and his mother randomly drops in and she always asks about the weather. As it’s wintertime now I usually say something like “a bit above freezing” because she doesn’t understand Celsius . Sometimes I let my boyfriend convert the number

[rodan]

@BIsTheAnswer

I think it’s just a case of an assumption made in a given culture. For example, in Dutch we have a word that’s nearly identical to 零点 “nulpunt” (from nul meaning zero, and punt meaning point). If you were to look up the official definition, it simply refers to the point where something is zero. The word itself doesn’t necessarily imply a scale. However in practice when using the word, it’s a synonym to the freezing point (unless you’re in math class, in which case it refers to the root of a function, but that seems to hold for 零点 as well). It’s not that the word itself directly implies this, it’s just that if not otherwise specified, the assumption is that you’re referring to zero Celsius, since that’s the only scale anyone uses here. From what I can tell 零点 functions identically, unless otherwise specified the assumed scale is Celsius, making it effectively a synonym for the freezing point.

I don’t think 零点 is special in any way here. When referring to temperatures, Japan like most of the world assumes Celsius. Similarly to how if I say “It’s 30 degrees outside” nobody will think I’m referring to 30 Kelvin, the assumption would either be 30 Fahrenheit for Americans or 30 Celsius for everyone else. For most countries using the Celsius scale, the notion of 0 is freezing is quite common due to the implied scale.

I totally agree.

But if for some reason you did have to deal with Fahrenheit or Kelvin, would you still use “nulpunt” to mean the freezing point? Or would it not make sense, or mean something different? Or is there another less ambiguous word you’d pick to avoid the problem entirely?
That question is all I’m trying to point out.

In the same way we don’t define the “degrees” in “it’s 30 degrees outside” as “degrees Celsius” because that’s almost always what it means, my issue is only with defining 零点 (or nulpunt from the sound of it) as “freezing point” in an SRS context, because it’s more like “0 degrees”, and doesn’t seem like it would mean the same thing in the Fahrenheit context I live in and might want to describe.

“Freezing point” implies (to me) a consistency across scale that “0 degrees” does not. And because I have to deal with two scales, whether that consistency across scale exists in the word or not is somewhat important, so it’s the first question I would want to answer if the definition doesn’t make it obvious.
“zero point” would I think still be completely understandable in weather contexts, and not have that problem.

Like, if it’s an “assumption made in a given culture,” and in my culture the assumption is not the same, I think it’s reasonable to wonder how the word might operate in my own context - whether it would change because the cultural assumption changed, or stay the same because the cultural assumption is so strong it “baked in” to the word, so to speak.
And (please correct me if this isn’t true about nulpunt), I got the impression 零点/“nulpunt” would not mean the same thing (or wouldn’t be said at all) if you removed the cultural assumption of Celsius (not like, erased Celsius from existence, just like, were talking about an American thermostat I mean).
Whereas the “freezing point” definition makes it sound like it would.

I think it’s good to convey “this word means the 0 point. For example, it can mean the freezing point when talking about the weather, because naturally 0 degrees is the freezing point of water in Japan along with most of the world.”
but it might be potentially misleading to convey “this word means the freezing point.” And SRS definitions have a hard time conveying that nuance, is all.

To put it one last way, you said “It’s not that the word itself directly implies this” and I agree with that. My issue with the “freezing point” synonym is it would make it sound to me like it is the word itself directly implying it. (when I don’t think that’s true).

[BIsTheAnswer]

@rodan

But if for some reason you did have to deal with Fahrenheit or Kelvin, would you still use “nulpunt” to mean the freezing point? Or would it not make sense, or mean something different? Or is there another less ambiguous word you’d pick to avoid the problem entirely?

It generally depends, in general it would refer to 0 on the scale, so if you explicitly state Fahrenheit it would be 0 on the Fahrenheit scale. For Kelvin it would refer to absolute zero, although we usually refer to that point as the “absoluut nulpunt”. If a scale is specified, it would refer to 0 on that scale. Although in practice the only time you’ll ever use it like this would be when you’re discussing temperature scales. 零点 seems to function similarly, but it’s just very rare to see a discussion about temperature scales, so it’s rare to see it refer to 0 on another scale, although it is certainly possible to use it that way.

I agree that the word itself simply refers to the “zero point”, not necessarily the freezing point. However I’d also argue that in most contexts the scale the zero is referring to is implied to be the Celsius scale, unless otherwise specified. In the case of WK’s system, I’d probably put something like “zero point” as the primary meaning, and add “freezing point” to the allow list, with a note in the meaning section stating that if not otherwise specified, it’s assumed to be zero Celsius, meaning it’s commonly used to refer to the freezing point as well. I don’t think “freezing point” should be wrong here, since the word is commonly used to refer to that temperature, however I also agree that it’s not the primary meaning of the word.