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.
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?
Background context: white woman, Air Force baby, moved to to America with my dad when he got redeployed when I was 11, scrambled to learn English, polished up my English with shit like Magic the Gathering, Futurama, and later, Disco Elysium, and am lately struggling to maintain my Japanese so I don’t feel linguistically homeless.
That said: it mostly just depends on whether you want stylistic choices of picking more English loan words (very modern, funky-style) or if you’re more of a traditionalist. Sometimes I’d use ゼロ when giving driving directions, but I’d also use 零 when telling time.
So yeah, I don’t know.
Edit: using 丸 in both of these contexts is weird but sometimes I’d use 丸 in phone numbers. Fuck, who opened this can of worms?
Language evolves pretty quickly. Do you still live in Japan? You hear ‘maru’ a lot in recent years. I agree in regards to saying ‘rei’ versus ‘zero’.
Nah, I’ve been in Oregon since I moved here. My English is pretty good now though; I pass as a native English speaker now, and generally don’t let people think otherwise. Once in a long while I’ll hear people shit talking me for being trans in Japanese, but not often (it usually happens in English, sadly).
