Occasioned by me watching the cutest (if frequently interrupted) version of the alphabet song ever Here I was wondering if the tune of the song and even the ending words are different in non-American English-speaking countries. I know that in England and a lot of the commonwealth countries you say “Zed” instead of “Zee” for the letter Z. That seems to mess with the rhythm of the song to me. Can anyone enlighten (yet another) dumb American?
Nope, in Aust its just another example of cultural imperialism! 
According to my 12yo and 10yo they use Zee (but think their teachers use Zed!).
But when they sing the alphabet backwards, they use Zed.
It doesn’t mess with the rhythm, but it does take away the rhyme. In my experience, in the UK - nobody cares that it doesn’t rhyme. Sometimes kids will say zee. English in Britain isn’t all the same, American English and British English is growingly interchangeable.
There’s a few different rhythmic versions of it dotting around I think. General condenses seems to be that it doesn’t matter.
My toddler says “zed” at the end, and doesn’t realise the rhyme doesn’t work.
The alphabet song uses Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as the music, (aka Baa Baa Black Sheep, etc, and Mozart has used it too) and for that reason it travels.
I remember learning it from Sesame Street when I was preschool age, but never encountered it in real life, such as at school or amongst my friends. The ‘zed’ and ‘zee’ difference was just one of many cultural differences I accounted for throughout my youth, using whichever was appropriate for the situation.
For some reason I find the idea of losing the rhyme disturbing. It diminishes it as a mnemonic.
Why would you find it disturbing? It’s not like it affects a child’s learning at all. In fact, it’s probably better that they can remember it without having to recall a rhyme imo.
Not only do they sing it in the UK but I use it to demonstrate the superiority of “zee” over “zed”. Because otherwise the song doesn’t rhyme, see.
In the UK when I was a kid we had a different alphabet song. Difficult to write it but it kinda goes:
A b c d
E f g
HI JK LM.
NO PQ
r S t U v
W
XY Zed.
I prefer Big Bird’s version, myself…
o/`Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwyxz
It’s the most remarkable word I’ve ever seen.
Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwyxz
I wish I knew exactly what I mean.
It starts out like an “A” word,
as anyone can see,
but somewhere in the middle
it gets awful QR to me! o/`
And of course, that wonderful word is pronounced something like “Ab-keef-ghefl-knop-qurstu-wic-ziz!”
A fellow traveler! See what I mean, it SHOULD rhyme. LOL
Who are you trying to convince though?
Ab’-cǝ-def’-gee-jek’ǝl-mǝnop’-kwǝr-stoov’-wixiz
The song is not used that much in the UK. The tune is ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ right?
But since we are now partly a cultural annex of the U.S. people don’t have any problem un-self-conciously saying Americanisms like ‘zee’ (yuk!).
I learned a Spanish version (with the ch, ll, and two other letters) in fourth grade. It had no relation to the English-speaking tune at all but otherwise was a chirpy little song without the ending imploring us to either sing along with me or won’t you come with me.
Korean doesn’t have it. School children repeat it in monotone.
There is a german version. But I don’t understand why it has to rhyme as long as it fits the melody?
In Jr High (California, late 80’s), we learned a Spanish version that does follow the familiar tune. However, the rhythm wasn’t everything you could hope for. Too many letters have extra syllables in Spanish.
We sang it in Canada, with the same metre as in the US, just with zed instead of zee. The rhyme didn’t matter.
Or Canadians will just sing “zee” but still call the letter “zed”, as we are generally aware that “zee” is the American name for “zed”.
I’ve heard the song sung in French, where it really doesn’t rhyme. There’s also no need to add the word “and” before the final letter, as the French name for “y” has two syllables “i grec” (pronounced Ee-grek; Greek i). I don’t remember the couple of lines at the end, though.