[QUOTE=Raguleader]
Which just goes to show you the natural superiority of **American culture! **Even aliens in other galaxies (who are already fluent in English, no less) use our pronunciation of the letter!
Actually, I was never sure if McKay said “Zed” because it never occurred to him to try it any other way, or if it was just one of his ways of needling everyone else about how much smarter than they he considered himself. He comes off as self-centered enough that he just might not notice that he’s the only one saying it like that and doesn’t give it any thought.
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[QUOTE=Raguleader]
Hey, I have a random question: If it’s called “Double-U”, why does it look like two V’s? Shouldn’t it be “Doublevee”?
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Now we go into French.
And yes, Canadian children say “XYZed” in the Alphabet song. Sometimes I sang (to my eldest, we don’t want to confuse the America-dwelling toddler) “next time won’t you sing with Fred”.
[QUOTE=panamajack]
Modern J didn’t exist then, either - only I. See the linked picture in previous post - “IVLIVS CÆSAR”. This is one of the reasons the scene in Indiana Jones : The Last Crusade where he has to pick the proper stones to walk on is silly (you have to believe they changed the test just to fool modern people.)
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OK fess up, how do you do that AE joined together.
[QUOTE=chowder]
OK fess up, how do you do that AE joined together.
I also wanna know how to type 1/2 in tiny font
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How do I do it? Option-Shift-’ . Though I usually can’t remember that, so I open up [del]Key Caps[/del] Keyboard Viewer to check (and to make sure it’s in the font). Failing that, I pop open the Character Viewer to find the Unicode symbol I want:
Like this one ½, assuming all goes well (it’s 00BD).
[QUOTE=Canadjun]
It’s pronounced Zed on this side of the Atlantic too. It’s just you guys south of the border that talk funny.
[/QUOTE]
When I came north 38 years ago, I said “zee” and my students all said “zed”. By the time I retired, I was saying “zed” and at least half my students were saying “zee”. Not Sesame Street because CBC replaced the “zee” segments (and the baby Spanish lessons) with baby French lessons.
FWIW, I was told that the “zed” hung on because it was too easy to confuse Z and C otherwise.
Speaking of Alphabet Song curiosae, I wrote the Arabic lyrics to it. It actually fits the Arabic alphabet far better than the English or French, because Arabic has 28 letters. The song has four phrases, each with eight beats made of seven notes and a rest. This makes 28 notes in the song, which fits the Arabic alphabet like a glove, you don’t have to force the letters to fit the phrases.
*alif ba’ ta’ tha’ jim ha’ kha’
dal dhal ra’ zay sin shin sad
dad ta’ za’ ‘ayn ghayn fa’ qaf
kaf lam mim nun ha’ waw ya’.
a‘rifu l-huruf al-an,
fa-‘allimni al-qur’an.*
I can type it out from memory just by, you know, singing the song to myself.
As a curious coincidence, the 11th Arabic letter ز corresponding to zee/zed is the only Arabic letter with two alternate names that Arabs can never agree on, LOL. It’s either za’ or zay. What is it with these voiced sibilants?
Excuse me, I’ve just decided to order pizza for some reason.
[QUOTE=sugar and spice]
I grew up in Buffalo and I used to watch Canadian TV all the time (we had one of those supersized antenna on the roof, Dad was too cheap for cable but he did like his hockey). I could have sworn I remember that they sang the alphabet song from A to Zed on the childrens shows, but maybe the tune was different? Canadian dopers, is my memory playing tricks on me? Perhaps I’m mushing all those shows together.
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I grew up in Buffalo, too and watched a lot (I mean a lot) of Canadian TV. I also remember the alphabet song going A to Zed.
( I also knew the Canadian anthem before the American from watching my dad watch all those Hockey games)
As for the OP’s question - don’t know if it’s important or not, but in Swedish (and, I would suspect some other European languages as well) theer is no Z sound. Sure, we have it in the alfabet, but we pronounce the letter “seta”, and the letter S “ES”.
So the word ZOO for example would be pronounced SOO in swedish.
Maybe that had a bigger impact on brittish english, which would explain the need to make it stand out more from the letter C. C and Z (pronounced zee) sounds pretty much the same, in my ears.
[QUOTE=Savannah]
I put a line through my 7s and zeds, but D too? I am intrigued. Upper or lower case, or both?
[/QUOTE]
Just the upper case, through the straight vertical part. Eliminates confusion with the letter O (or the number zero, which as an early geek I always cross unless there’s a possibility of confusion with the empty set) when hand writing.
I used to like to write my 1’s in the German style, but too many people identify them as 7’s.
**Zed: ** *[watching his memory-scan video of hunting down Brutals] * I love to see them running. I love the moments of their deaths - when I am one with Zardoz.
An expression we sometimes use here in the U.S. is, “I need to catch (or get) some Z’s”, which means, “I need some sleep.” Do people say, “I need to catch some zeds” in places where “zed” is the norm?
“Zed” is the norm here. There is no Z sound in Thai, so if I’m spelling something for a Thai, and I say “zee,” he or she thinks I’m saying C. There’s a lot of British usage here. “Zed” is what they’re taught for our alphabet.
[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
“Zed” is the norm here. There is no Z sound in Thai, so if I’m spelling something for a Thai, and I say “zee,” he or she thinks I’m saying C. There’s a lot of British usage here. “Zed” is what they’re taught for our alphabet.
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Oh, and since there is no Z sound in Thai, AND syllables never end with the D sound but rather only begin with it, “zed” usually comes out as “set” when Thais say it.
[QUOTE=dwc1970]
An expression we sometimes use here in the U.S. is, “I need to catch (or get) some Z’s”, which means, “I need some sleep.” Do people say, “I need to catch some zeds” in places where “zed” is the norm?
[/QUOTE]
The expression isn’t all that common, but the few times I’ve heard someone in Australia or NZ use it, they have indeed said they were “Catching some Zeds”.
[QUOTE=Dominic Mulligan]
Sorry. I meant the “aye” sound as in “aye-aye captain”.
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That reminds me of a joke. An astronaut’s ship goes spinning out of control upon reentry, and he crash lands in the Australian Outback. When he comes to, he’s in some sort of hospital. He sees a nurse and asks her, “Did they bring me here to die?” She gives the question a good deal of thought and finally answers, “No, I don’t think so. I think they brought you her yesterdie.”
