55th floor is really only the 47th floor

We live on the 55th floor but technically we only live on the 47th floor because of the number 4. At home we have apartment buildings that do not include a 13th floor due to superstition. Here people are superstitious about the number 4. So most buildings exclude the 4th, 14th, 24th, 34th etc floor. The reason for this is because the number 4 in cantonese and mandarin sounds like the word death. In fact the difference is so subtle that I could not hear a difference. It is similar to us saying the words teeth and the word for when a baby is getting teeth we say they teeth. Or like us saying funnel and fennel but even more subtle.

In Kowloon where we live, the buildings did not get much higher than 20 floors because of the airport. Now that the airport has moved they are developing high buildings like ours. The developers would not normally include any floors with the #4 in them but now have decided it is not fair if some buildings include the 40s floors and some do not, so they are incuding them. However, the builders have drawn a line at the 40s and will not include 44. The floors deathy 0, deathy 1, deathy 2, deathy 3 are bad enough but deathy-death is out of the question. Who would live on a floor called deathy-death? So if you add 'em all up, our 55th floor is actually the deathy-7th floor!