In all seriousness, Sesame Street and other American children’s programming have effected a change in pronunciation here in Canada. I was raised pronouncing “z” as “zed”, and that’s how I’ve taught my kids to say it (they’re 4 and 2). However, after hearing the American permutation of the ABC song repeatedly on TV and in children’s music, they sometimes say “zed” and sometimes “zee”. Here, I find the oldsters like me say “zed”, while younger folk say “zee”.
It does baffle me that the whole “zed” thing is still confusing for some Americans though. My last name has a zed in it, and I usually get a confused “say what now?” when I spell my name making hotel or restaurant reservations in the States.
Many (most?) Americans are utterly unaware a world exists outside their borders. Of those who know it exists, they assume its just like them, only browner & poorer & less wonderful somehow.
It isn’t any more complex than that.
Hell, we have threads here all the time where some American asks a question and it turns out they’ve never considered the idea that other US states might have different slang or different rules for registering their cars. Much less considered how that might be done in some strange and exotic realm like Canada.
Back to the OP …
I deal with NZers a lot over the phone and I have yet to hear anyone say “zee”. But the youngest I deal with are in their late 20s. So perhaps Sesame Street is corrupting their kids too, but I haven’t heard it yet.
It baffles you that hostesses and hotel employees are confused by your regionalisms? It’s really easy to mishear something being spelled out on the phone even when using the same dialect. Americans don’t have a letter that sounds like zed, and we don’t get bombarded by a cultural monolith next door that does. Expecting foreigners to understand you rather than learning local customs has a name: being an Ugly American.
:rolleyes:
Yes, that’s the reason. It doesn’t have anything to do with different cultures using different words/pronunciations. No, it’s because Americans are all xenophobic racists.
When I moved to Canada, I always said “zee” and my students all said “zed”. I quickly started saying “zed”, but over the years, more and more students would say “zee”, so I assume that “zed” will eventually disappear here.
On Friday, I heard the CBC mid-morning announcer say that she was glad the weekend was coming and she could “Catch some zees”. I really don’t know what a Brit would say in that context.
Oh, please. Local customs? It’s not like I was speaking Chinese. People in the hospitality industry in the US deal with Canadians and Brits all the time. I don’t expect the waitress at the local diner to know what “zed” is, but when I’m checking into a strip hotel in Vegas, I can’t imagine that it’s the first time they’ve heard it.
It’s not really a big deal. I’m able to understand what the problem is and say “zee” when I get the blank looks.
Yeah, you’re being kind of ridiculous here. I’m sure it is changing with Sesame Street and whatnot, but ‘zed’ is the pronunciation of the name of that letter in more or less every other English-speaking country. It is hardly a regionalism.
For an American to not know that it is called ‘zed’ elsewhere is, I think, culpable ignorance.
And in every other English-speaking country, do they talk about the alphabet all the time? Why would you assume that it’s ever come up in conversation for the average American? Just how common do you think it is for foreigners to spell things to an American, especially something with a zee, so that they’ll become aware of this bit of trivia?
If you read any book from any other Anglophone culture where someone has occasion to spell something, or watch any TV or films where the same happens. Not a frequent occurrence, I grant you … but for it to have slipped by someone for decades … idiotic. I know the US is insular but that’s just crazy.
I mean come on, it’s one of the stereotypical differences between US and Canada or the UK. Just because most Americans haven’t been to the UK doesn’t mean I wouldn’t expect them to know that people in the UK drive on the other side of the road. Same with zed.
I can’t speak for the entirety of your country, but you’re the only American I’ve encountered who wasn’t aware of it. It’s pretty common knowledge.
And yes, these sorts of things do come up! As a conversation between an American and a Brit continues, the probability of accents and dialects being discussed approaches 1.
I can give you two, but they pretty much reinforce the fact that “zed” has no reason to be common in the US.
In Men in Black, Rip Torn plays Zed, not Zee. Although it’s never explained why he was Zed and all of the other characters (J, K, L, D, T, etc) just use one letter. To me, Zed was a word or a title. I wouldn’t learn that Zed = Z until a thread on this board years later.
But there’s also a scene in Shaun of the Dead where Shaun’s best friend refers to the zombies as zombies and Shaun corrects him “Don’t use the zed word”. You can pick it up from context that Zed = Z, but I think Shaun of the Dead is a bigger hit in geek circles than among the general population.
No I can’t show you either of those things. It’s hardly a memorable point, which in a way backs me up – the info is such a commonplace.
One example: in Stargate Atlantis, a pretty popular show, one of the characters is Canadian and it comes up. But everyone’s reaction (including the apparently uncurious Col. O’Neill) is not ‘what are you talking about’, but ‘oh, he must be Canadian’.
Can you give counterexamples please? A book where “Zee” is *spelt *out. Or three movies, just three? Sesame Street doesn’t count, things aimed at older children or grown ups only.
I think RickJay’s point is that it’s idiotic to expect Americans to be familar Z = Zed in the UK due to UK pop culture because the spelling/pronounciation of a letter is not a common subject.
That’s why the “you stupid Americans” tone of this hread is so distasteful.
ETA: Also, italicizing spelt as if spelled is wrong proves that you don’t know how American English works.
[ol]
[li]What about the (assumed) fact that people in the UK and Australia and NZ know that Americans say ‘zee’? They have all the same excuses for not knowing as do Americans-- more, in fact, since there’s just one country that says it ‘zee’, as opposed to the * entire rest of the Anglophone world*.[/li]
Now, you might respond that this is because American culture is commonly consumed in those places, but not vice versa. Well, that is just another way of saying that Americans as a whole are insular or ignorant, and not individuals.
[li] I really think you defensively missed Peter Morris’s point. If I understand his meaning right, he italicised ‘spelt’ to emphasise that he means cases where ‘zee’ is spelt out with all three letters, and not just written as ‘z’. It was not orthographic imperialism, and your reaction just makes you look touchy.[/li][/ol]
I am familiar with Zee, why are you not familiar with Zed. If it is uncommon for the name of the letter to be spelt or sounded, why do I know about your little peculiarity but you are unaware of the rest of the world’s? (General “you”.)
Tell me about it! It gets to tedious. I swear that if/when I return to the UK, I won’t inflict that tedium on any Americans I meet, nor will I bore them with tales of when I ‘lived in the South’.
Actually, it’s an attempt at a joke. The word is “spelled” in the USA but “spelt” in the UK. So, if an American asks for an example of ZED being spelled out, I shoul;d ask for ZEE being spelt out.
