dê-rô

Vietnamese

Etymology

French zéro.

Pronunciation

• (Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [ze˧˧ zo˧˧]
• (Huế) IPA^(key): [jej˧˧ ʐow˧˧]
• (Hồ Chí Minh City) IPA^(key): [jej˧˧ ɹow˧˧]

• Audio (Hà Nội)

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Numeral

dê-rô

1. (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/.