Examples:
- One oh two Main Street
- Four oh seven PM
- Biology one oh one
- Eight six seven, five three oh nine
- Four oh four: Not found
Not just a US thing, so I hope this is okay to ask here. I have just never encountered this is any language other than English. Is it simply that O and 0 look similar, and that “oh” has fewer syllables than “zero”? I have not heard a good explanation from coworkers who I’ve asked.
In Japanese, they sometimes call 0 ‘circle’ (maru).
Very much not an American thing or even an English language thing.
Yeah, but it just gets shortened to 零, れい, one syllable.
Edit: I would much rather say れい than ゼロ, just slides off the tongue faster.
Rei and maru are not related to one another. Rei is used a lot less frequently than you would think.
Has my Japanese gotten that bad that I’m being corrected on that too? That was my first language.
sigh
Oh! A native speaker! I’ll take this opportunity to ask: Is there a distinction between 零 and ゼロ or is it more or less interchangeable?