[brobinson]

>the number 4 sounds sort of like death

This is actually true in all the major Asian languages, surprisingly. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia

[rglovejoy]

Eight, on the other hand, is extremely lucky.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_in_Chinese_culture#Eig...

[zhemao]

Not really surprising since all of those languages (except maybe Vietnamese) derive the pronunciation of both words from Middle Chinese.