Maybe someone from Japan can clarify if the are talking about the English word "number 1" or if they mean the japanese term "dai ichi".
After the adoption of the Chinese writing, all the signs have been taken together with their Chinese pronunciation, which has introduced a huge number of Chinese words in the Japanese language. The Chinese words are used mostly in the compound words that are written with 2 or more kanji, but also for some simple words.
For example, 4 is "yon" in native Japanese and "shi" in the Chinese variant that has been included in Japanese; 3 is "mi" in native Japanese and "san" in the Chinese variant, and so on.
There are contexts where the native Japanese numerals are preferred, but the native words for 4 and 7 are used more often than the others to avoid "shi" (Chinese death), as others have already mentioned.
The native Japanese words appear quite different from the Chinese words that form a large part of modern Japanese. The native words are usually much longer, with many syllables and with a large proportion of vowels versus consonants. Many native words seem structurally more similar to the words of the Austronesian languages, like those of the natives of Taiwan, who inhabited the Southern neighbor of Japan before the migration of Chinese into it during the last half of a millennium.
it seems like the use of "number 1" made them think they were ready to take off, not that it sounded like a similar phrase. someone please correct me if i'm wrong.
Though nowadays most major airports probably are English only, it wasn't so long ago that pilots were complaining that most of the traffic at CDG was in French for instance.
For what it's worth, I believe Japan is very strict in the English only however.
This is not strictly true, is it? They should be able to speak English, but they are not required to use it. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/14254
Source: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240109/k10014314211000.ht...
Also it seems like this is a temporary measure (seeing NHK says "対策では当面、事前に出発順は伝えずに離陸許可を出すとしています。" )?
Perhaps it will come back once the non-civilian traffic goes back to pre-earthquake levels?
It makes a mess of hotel floors that try to cater to many cultures.
numbers: ichi, ni, san, ....
or hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu,
people: hitori, futari, nin ..
Or by shape: hon (thin objects), ko (small round objects), mai (flat objects).