This has been alluded to before, but allow me to clarify:
All other things being equal – “diversity,” foreign-produced television programming, cluelessness. etc. – a group of people which says “zee” will have fewer people aware of the other group’s use of “zed” than vice-versa…SIMPLY BECAUSE “ZED” IS OBJECTIVELY ODD. You don’t need to go fishing for any other reason.
That is, many “zee” folks will fail to register what they’re hearing when a “zed” person says “zed,” because “zed” fails to fit an obvious pattern, which “zee” does fit that pattern.
But then it’s spoken. And never spelled out. I’ve watched a quite a few BBC programmes (;)) and no one’s ever turned to the camera and said “See what I did there? I said Zeh’bra – that’s Zeh’bra with a Zed.”
And any time someone on the Beeb does say “Zed,” I guarantee a lot of American viewers space it out completely. Probably think the actor was talking about something foreign and then forget about it immediately, never imagining that it was the letter Z that was being pronounced.
I think you will find it is one of those wacky US things where they removed the Us and mis-spelt aluminium- it was one of the first discussions I had here back in the early days.
An American will see Canada as culturally American with a few odd Britishisms. A Brit will tend to notice how like the UK it is in many ways if they have had experience of the USA itself.
I have problems both ways as I was educated in the US but have lived in Britain most of my life since then.
speaking for myself, I was aware of the “zee/zed” difference early on. Thanks mostly to the CBC broadcasts of Sesame Street and Hockey Night in Canada. Followed, of course, by The National with Knowlton Nash.
I wish Canadians would tell Scott to stop being such a dick.
I knew growing up - and even heard jokes about it…I can kinda recall covering the differences between English and American in English classes at school.
I have to say, I get really sick of this sort of accusation. I know that I, for one, am aware of zed, I have watched both Das Boot and Der Himmel Uber Berlin in German (with subtitles). I have been to a couple dozen countries on multiple continents. And I would say that this is also true for most of my peers.
I would bet you that most Americans know what lorries and the loo (sp?) are. I think zed just doesn’t come up that much- I mean really, how often are you actually saying the name of that letter, and even when heard, without context it could easily slip by.
Of course the rest of the world knows “Americanisms.” Hollywood just happens to be a juggernaut. And English programming has reached a fairly wide audience here- Monty Python, Are You Being Served, Fawlty Towers, Keeping Up Appearences, and a host of other programs have all found wide audiences, as have the Harry Potter books, The Lord of The Rings- in fact, as I sit here typing, I realize I could go on and on.
In fact, in my experience the (American) folks who say most Americans don’t know this or that, interestingly, are pointing themselves out as the exception.
I’m not sure exactly how I learned about zee vs. zed, but I think it was from an article or TV segment specifically addressing the differences between British and American English, and I’m pretty sure I was an adult at the time.
I have heard the pronunciation “izzed”. It was very clear and noticeable, because the gentleman in question was giving the instructions for an exam, in the course of which he had several times to say “w, x, y or izzed”.
(The real questions had answers marked a, b, c, d; while the sample questions for each section had answers w, x, y, z.)
This. I would have thought it a name. Zed as in Zed Williams, famous cricket player or some such. In fact, the only time I heard it was in the movie “Men in Black” and it was the name of someone. There’s a whole pile of stuff I don’t understand watching shows from the other side of the pond. If a Canadian actor tried to say it in an American TV show they would have been forced at pun-point to say it correctly.
Hearing it and understanding it are 2 different things.
