Why people say O or Oh for 0(Zero)

Yes, people like to take shortcuts.

Suthish, you will enjoy The Hobbit books when you have a chance to read them. The author has a few paragraphs about the tendency for people to be in a hurry and say things very quickly.

So people whose native language is English have a tendency to pronounce zero as if it is a letter. There are very many other shortcuts but I cannot think of very many now. One example is saying "perp" instead of perpretator. In some television shows they say unsub instead of unknown subject.

I notice that in forums such as these that it is people of India that are more likely to say 2 and u instead of to and you. So it is all people that do things to save time and such in one way or another.

Hemanth, we have to watch what forum that a discussion is put into. Since the current forum software "lumps" all questions and discussions togetehr in one page, it is easy to not realize that a discussion is in the "Coffee, Chai Lounge" or the "Fun and Jokes" forum. I don't know if the new software will work differently.

Hi Suthish Nair,

More over this 'O' came into picture from places like America and Europe i think.
They always call zero as 'Oh' or 'O' instead of zero. They got accustomed to that may be bcoz of their predecessors.

As Hemanth said, I think people sometimes say 'Oh' for zero because it looks like the letter 'O'. However, it's jargon rather than standard English.

I do it myself and I sometimes say 'nought' as well, rather than 'zero'.

Incidentally, there's nothing wrong with asking non-technical questions on the 'Coffee, Chai Lounge' forum, Hemanth :)