dê-rô

Vietnamese

Etymology

French zéro.

Pronunciation

(Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [ze˧˧ zo˧˧]
(Huế) IPA^(key): [jej˧˧ ʐow˧˧]
(Saigon) IPA^(key): [jej˧˧ ɹow˧˧]
Phonetic spelling: dê rô
Audio (Hà Nội): (file)

Numeral

dê-rô

(colloquial, chiefly education) zero
Synonym: không

Usage notes

This word is often vocalized and not spelt out, therefore it's not quite clear what a "proper" spelling would be. The English spelling zero is a likely candidate. Since it's a word whose foreignness can be felt, math teachers, even southern ones, use the northern fricative /z/ rather than the southern approximant /j/, hence /zero/ rather than /jero/.