The letter may be called Zed in some parts of the UK but I can tell you the pronunciation is not you don’t call a zebra a zeeedbra it is zeeeebra .
No I think the poster above was saying Americans like type of movies and TV shows that are very different in the UK.
The British movies and TV shows just seem very odd .I’m sure if there was British start trek type show it be all over the US.
No, in fact in the UK zebra is pronounced to rhyme with zed in the first syllable: as in Debra.
So you don’t say zeeeebra ? Is this all parts of the UK?
So all these words sound different in the UK?
zoo
zeal
zig
zag
zigzag
zoology
zoologist
zoom
zone
zinc
zit
zither
zip
zipper
zodiac
zany
Zulu
Zen
zap
zenith
zero
zest
zillion
ziggura
zinnia
No. Just zebra for the most part.
I don’t understand . I’m confused.
…most parts of the world actually.
zedoo
zedeal
zedig
zedag
zedigzedag
zedology
zedologist
zedoom
Actually, I like that.
Like one of those secret languages where they just add a syllable to the middle of each word.
That is thing in the US and in Canada there are different accents and dialects. I could go Dallas and some will have Taxes accent than you get Hispanics ,Asians and all the transplants in Dallas from the other southern states , west coats and north so on.Most big cities in the US and Canada would have many accents and dialects.
You could go to Toronto or Montreal and you get British accent, French accent , Canadian accent and so on .Even in Canada there are different accents.Some place in Canada have big thick accent that hard to understand.Where southern Ontario is more American like , but you go to some other places in Canada it very thick.I know if you ever seen parliament debate on TV some of these people have real thick Canadian accents.
Than those the Italians in the US and Canada and some them have Italian accent.
When I was in California some people even had California accent and dialects the words **awesome ,totally ,like ,oh my god. Like totally,totally hot, the he Valley Girl and up talk.
**
I thick the problem in the UK is less diversity and spread out so you have less accents and dialects.
Oh shit, now you’ve really stirred the pot.
I’ve never heard more variations on English than I have from people in the UK.
Definitely. I’m in California and I deal with Blackberry as part of my job all the time, we do call their new phone the “Zee 10”.
ETA: There is a local California engineering office of Blackberry not far from here, I bet they also call it the “Zee 10”.
yes. now that you mention it, one of the radio stations I listen to is CIMX (Windsor) and they’ve been running ads for the new Sony Experia Zed-L smartphone. Every once in a while I’ll hear it and go “whut,” then I’ll remember which station I have on.
Is this supposed to be tongue-in-cheek? Because if you’re being serious, that’s just nuts. The UK has got the most variance in accents in a small geographic space I’ve experienced in any English-speaking country. I mean, you can be in a town where you understand everyone, then go a village or two over and be completely lost in a completely different accent. It’s quite fascinating from a linguistic standpoint for me.
Just to add a data point…
I lived in the UK for 17 months (early 1991-mid 1992), and I never heard the zed thing until I saw this commercial in 1993.
Seriously, if you went down to the pub to compare alphabets, you were doing something wrong.
I think I first heard this back in the 1970s on something from British TV on tape at a con.
Might have been Dr. Who. Hard to tell at this point, but yes, I know that pronunciation of the terminal letter of the Latin alphabet.
The US has always been a bit stand-offish. The entire ‘exceptionalism’ idea is silly. We are an amalgam of several other cultures and have many of the customs of other nations, but so do other countries. It is one of our more annoying traits as a people.
Well wouldn’t the letter be pronounced zeded then? Or maybe zededed?
As to the question of our northern neighbors, I think this is the salient point. I’d guess that most Americans don’t perceive Canada as “foreign” - at least, Americans who don’t routinely interact with Canadians. Yeah, there is a “funny Canajun accent”, and yeah, they say odd things like “zed” and “chesterfield”; but there is enough cultural similarity - based on language and history - that they don’t “read” as foreign, the way Hispanics or West Indians do. For evidence, I present the dozens if not hundreds of Canadians who have had careers in American media - Tom Jennings, Dave Foley, Colbie Smulders, Alan Thicke. Unless it’s part of their act - like Colbie Smulder’s character on How I Met Your Mother - most Americans don’t even realize they’re from the Great White North.
Exactly. I think most Americans know that the rest of the English-speaking world says things like “petrol” and “lorry” and “lift”, because those things come up more often in media. “Zed” is pretty subtle, though - the only time I notice it is when Jeremy Clarke talks about the BMW “Zed-Four” or the “Nissan Zed series” on Top Gear. And come to that, how many of you Commonwealth folk know that the Japanese automaker is pronounced “NEE-sahn” in the US, as opposed to “N’ sahn”? Same sort of subtle difference that doesn’t come up all that often.
Lastly, the Alphabet Song does not work as well with “zed”. Sing it to yourself; it goes “ay bee cee dee eee ef GEE, aich eye jay kay ellemenoh PEE, kyew arr ess, tee yew VEE, double-yew ecks, wye and ZEE. Now I know my ay-bee-CEEs, next time won’t you sing with MEE.” The stressed syllables carry the rhyme.
At my kids’ school I’ve noticed that they’ve kind of given up on the “alphabet song” these days, and rap the alphabet instead. Then you don’t care, because nothing rhymes
A. B. A B C.
A B C D EFG.
H. I. H I J.
H I J K LMN.
(and so on and so forth)