I’ve heard this used a lot and it always threw me. Being an American, I’m not used to hearing this, but it seems that people from the United Kingdom and Canada refer to the letter Z as “zed”. I’m taking an educated guess that this has something to do with the relation to the Greek letter zeta, but how did this come to be? I honestly hadn’t noticed this until just recently … I kind of figured the letter Z in the English alphabet was always just pronounced “zee” by English speakers everywhere.
Anybody know if there’s any sort of etymological explanation as to why calling a Z a “zee” seems to be a uniquely American thing? We’ve got a very international mix here … hopefully someone can shed some light on it?
As a possibly interesting aside, in Korea, kids are taught to say the letter Z “jet-ta” or some close approximation thereof. It’s hard to spell out in English. In any case, it’s obviously derived from zed, not from zee, so I’m curious where this comes from as well.
Thanks for the link to that article … a bit hard to find since I couldn’t search for a three letter word and hadn’t thought to look there. I guess that wraps up this thread! :smack:
Am I the only one who has troubles distinguishing c and z whan Americans say “zee”? Especially over the phone (which is about the only occasion I ever talk to Americans), I can hear no difference.
Just as a sidenote, it is pronounced zed by Japanese. Partially, this is easier for them to pronounce given the sounds they have in their own language–but I would guess is more related to England being of larger influence in modernizing Japan than the US (which got embroiled in the Civil War shortly after “opening” Japan and subsequently lost interest until about 1930* when Japan started attacking China.)
Also, a semi-related question, are their instances where British say “got” that isn’t used in American English? There seems to be some instance in which I use it that is non-standard (though I can’t pinpoint what phrasing it is specifically that will cause mirth), and I am not sure whether I picked this up from reading too many books from Oxford press or from growing up among hicks? …randomly occured to me to ask.
No examples spring to mind, but I know that British English tends to use “got” where we Americans would use “gotten”. “Gotten” is becoming obsolete in British English.
