Why liǎng and not èr for the dragon?

[ChaojiShucaiRen]

So I was looking through the Tidbits section and I ran into an unanswered bit of information along the way. In the Evil Dragons tidbit it states that liǎng means closer to 'pair' than it does to 'two', so why do they not use èr? I had a theory that maybe they used liǎng because they were saying that the dragon had a pair of dragonballs 'insert obvious joke here'. But then why didn't they follow the pattern with the other dragons as well? So I guess what my question is; does anybody have any information pertaining to this conundrum or maybe an educated guess? Thanks in advanced!

[Herms]

In GT they started using "liang" for the 2-star ball as well, so it's not just for the dragon. Don't know why they switched to that though.

[caejones]

You almost always use liang when referring to two of something in Chinese... like... I can't think of any times you'd use èr to refer to a pair (You might use 'yi xuang' (*isn't certain of the pinyin) to say "a pair", but never "èr xin").

There aren't really differences with other numbers, so there aren't any instances where they could have made changes. The only other I can think of is 1 sometimes being said as "yào", but that's in the context of reading a series like phonenumbers, and that's where you'd use èr.

So yeah. In chinese you'd say it about like the names of the dragons. Though... something about it sounds a little minimalist to me, just because I've gotten used to particles flying all over the place... XD

[ChaojiShucaiRen]

You almost always use liang when referring to two of something in Chinese... like... I can't think of any times you'd use èr to refer to a pair (You might use 'yi xuang' (*isn't certain of the pinyin) to say "a pair", but never "èr xin").

There aren't really differences with other numbers, so there aren't any instances where they could have made changes. The only other I can think of is 1 sometimes being said as "yào", but that's in the context of reading a series like phonenumbers, and that's where you'd use èr.

So yeah. In chinese you'd say it about like the names of the dragons. Though... something about it sounds a little minimalist to me, just because I've gotten used to particles flying all over the place... XD

Hmmm...well what I meant was that I knew that liǎng meant 'pair' in Chinese and that is where the confusion sets in. The dragonballs and subsequently the evil dragons all should follow the standard numerical sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (yī, èr, sān, sì, wǔ, liù, qī). But for some odd reason the second dragonball and dragon where given the word 'liǎng' for it's/their title. It would be like saying one, pair/a couple of/some, three, four, etc. The whole thing flabbergasts me. Maybe someone over at Toei thought that 'èr' didn't translate well or something...

[caejones]

Hmmm...well what I meant was that I knew that liǎng meant 'pair' in Chinese and that is where the confusion sets in. The dragonballs and subsequently the evil dragons all should follow the standard numerical sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (yī, èr, sān, sì, wǔ, liù, qī). But for some odd reason the second dragonball and dragon where given the word 'liǎng' for it's/their title. It would be like saying one, pair/a couple of/some, three, four, etc. The whole thing flabbergasts me. Maybe someone over at Toei thought that 'èr' didn't translate well or something...

Well... èr doesn't translate well, does it?
èr xin would mean more like #2 star, or star#2... I dunno, could it be "second star" (that doesn't seem right)?
I mean... if I were talking about the DBs in Chinese, even without knowing how they're referenced in the Japanese version, I'd probably say something like liang xin qiu when referring to the ball (or liang xin lông when referring to the dragon).

[ChaojiShucaiRen]

But that doesn't work because #2 or 'second' would be dì'èr 第二, as in the "second" of something (dì'èr xin qiú - the "second" star dragonball). So if you translate it, if you want to say "The two-star dragonball": than it would be èr xin qiú. But if you want to say "The second-star dragonball"; it would be dì'èr xin qiú as noted above. Liǎng isn't correct any way you can slice it, unless the dialect that you speak (or are currently learning) uses liǎng slightly differently.