Why do you say the letter "O" when you mean the digit "0"? (feddit.org)

submitted 4 days ago by SatyrSack@feddit.org to c/AskUSA@discuss.online

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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.

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[-] wjrii@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I'm just musing, but I wonder if there's anything to the fact that in Italian, zero is already a contraction of the earlier zevero or zefiro, and speakers of other Romance languages maybe would have felt that idea intuitively or even, among certain groups, explicitly.

Then there's the fact that French just get pissy about linguistic change generally. 🤣

this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2024

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