Just starting learning German and a number of texts I've read say that 'zwei' takes on a morphological change to 'zwo' in spoken speech to differentiate with 'drei'. How often do people actually use this alternative in everyday speech, or is this one of those textbook 'Good to know!' asides that actually only live within the confines of textbook pages?
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18It is important to know that R2-D2 from Star Wars always has two "zwo"s and no "zwei". Here the "zwo" is mandatory! ;-)– ChrisCommented Aug 3, 2014 at 20:05
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2Wikipedia backs you up on this, but I would have called him Err-Zwei-De-Zwei without batting an eyelid... Of course I only ever saw the movies in English.– IngmarCommented Aug 4, 2014 at 6:28
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6''Zwo'' is definitely more common than ''fünnef'' (5) and it’s more likely to be used with digits than with numbers. It’s also canonical in some places that already have been mentioned, most notably ''links, zwo, drei, vier''.– CrissovCommented Aug 4, 2014 at 6:36
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2related: german.stackexchange.com/questions/9154/…– Vogel612Commented Aug 4, 2014 at 15:49
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1@Ingmar: Diese Typennummern (R2D2 und C3PO) wurden wohl gewählt, weil sie in Englisch ziemlich gut klingen. Artuditu klingt niedlich, Sithripio klingt "shakespearisch"-klassisch und irgendwie gebildet. Das geht in der Übersetzung total verloren. Es passt zu den Erscheinungen: R2D2 pfeift niedlich, C3PO spricht gebildetes Englisch.– Rudy VelthuisCommented Mar 29, 2018 at 18:59
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7 Answers
Above all, it's good to know. Speaking for Austria, it's not very common in spoken language (any more -- used to be much more frequent), unless you are on the telephone, say, and want to make extra certain that no mistakes are made. It's routinely used in radio communications, too, much like the English "niner".
Personally I use it for important things like a phone number, bank account or credit card number, things like that. It's definitely used, but not as common as you might think.
From my understanding, "zwo" is a replacement for the correct "zwei" that has emerged and became relatively widespread when telephones and radio communication were introduced because with bad signal quality affecting especially consonants, "zwei" might easily be confused with "drei".
I would suppose that part of it becoming widespread was through the military. Also it became common in business communication (offices) because of the growing importance of communication via telephone.
However, it never made it into everyday and standard language. (In everyday language perhaps by way of contamination from military and office use.) You would never write "zwo", or if you did, readers would ask themselves what's wrong with you.
There might be regions in Germany where "zwo" is part of an oral regiolect. I would intuitively locate this somewhere in the Middle-North-West of today's Germany, but I may be wrong about this. I would not see it related to the Bavarian "zwoa", because the change of vocals from "zwei" to "zwoa" is systematic in Bavarian, see Eichhörnchen --> "Oachkatzl", meinst du --> "moanst", du weißt --> "woast". I think where people in Bavaria say "zwo" they took this from the telecommunications habits described above. But actually I have never heard a Bavarian say "zwo", and quite logically so, because due to their anyway existing "zwoa" they have no need of using an artificial word to differentiate zwei from drei.
answered Mar 28, 2018 at 7:58
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In my practice, I sometimes have problems properly hearing the difference between "eins", "zwei" or "drei" (I guess my hearing is slightly impaired by the high frequency of the drills), so I taught them to say "eins", "zwo", "drü" (like the Swiss team in Cool Runnings). Works for me. Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 19:08
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5Same as with "Juno" and "Julei", I guess: to better stress the difference between the two similar names. Commented Mar 29, 2018 at 19:12
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Zwo is not "a replacement for the correct zwei" , nor is it "artificial". Zwo is historically the feminine of zwei, cognate with the English "two" and similar forms in other Germanic and Indo-European languages. In referring to a feminine noun, zwei is a "replacement" of the "correct" zwo..– fdbCommented Oct 24, 2021 at 22:48
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I first ran into this when, as serving with the US Army in Germany in 1995. I listened to a Polizei transmit a number 27262 as zwo, sieben, zwo, sechs, zwo. In my broken German, I asked him why zwo and not zwei and he explained they used zwo for all radio communications to clearly differentiate from drei and then went on to point out that we NATO use FIFE instead of five and NINER instead of nine.
That's dependent of the Region.
As you may know in German there are more Dialects than in English.
In the southern 'states' (e.g. Bavaria) zwo or zwoa or even zwaa (but zwaa more in Austria) are used pretty often (sometimes people use only zwo or zwoa). In the northern parts of Germany most people use zwei.
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1Zwa(a) is used in Austrian dialects, too, not more. "Zwo" is not originally Bavarian. Zwoa and zwa(a) are.– user6191Commented Aug 3, 2014 at 18:32
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Are you from western Bavaria?– user6191Commented Aug 3, 2014 at 18:35
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2“in German there are more Dialects than in English” – that’s a claim that probably won’t stand any review, even if you applied a very narrow definition of dialect to English and a very broad one to German.– CrissovCommented Aug 4, 2014 at 6:30
Heard it in Germany at train stations, it is used to announce the train number, at least in automated messages.
In the Bundeswehr, use of zwo when counting is definitely still common, although it might be dependent on region.
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Yes, getting the feeling that this is very much a regional thing. Playing it by ear dependant on where you are in Germany appears to be the key!– RyanCommented Aug 18, 2014 at 6:01
Additionally to the other stuff mentioned above, "zwo" is a term used in the classical german card game of "Skat", where it is used in the first phase of the game.
