So after expressing surprise that anglophone Canadians pronounce the letter ‘Z’ as “Zed” (if I were to quote my phrase phoenitically, “Oh, you guys pronounce ‘zee’ as ‘zed'”),
Getting a word in edgewise
So after expressing surprise that anglophone Canadians pronounce the letter ‘Z’ as “Zed” (if I were to quote my phrase phoenitically, “Oh, you guys pronounce ‘zee’ as ‘zed'”),
Lol. That’s cool. They should show it in America.
So, in the UK do you pronounce it ‘zee’ or ‘zed’?
Most native English speakers pronounce it Zed, except in America.
Please excuse the imminent US chauvanistic pedantry
I certainly accept that most countries with english as their first language pronounce ‘z’ ‘zed’, but I would point out that australia, canada, new zealand, ireland, south africa, and the uk taken together have a little less than 2/3 the population of the united states (using wikipedia numbers), which does make me question whether “most” native english speakers pronounce it ‘zed’.
Re: Please excuse the imminent US chauvanistic pedantry
Most English-speaking nations then. And yes that’s fairly typical US-centrism.
Re: Please excuse the imminent US chauvanistic pedantry
Quantity, however, is no guarantee of quality. =)
Re: Please excuse the imminent US chauvanistic pedantry
I agree – there may be more Americans, but they’re certainly not of better quality.
Ouch!
Why ouch? He didn’t say that Americans in general are of “worse” quality (which would be silly, given that a word like “quality” isn’t something that can readily be applied to an entire group, much less by nation of origin) and even if he did, certainly not all of them are. 🙂
I think that most of the former British colonies pronounce it as ‘zed’. From personal experience I’ve heard Australians, Indians, and British use it that way. Again, the US seems to be the rogue nation when it comes to the English language. “Take your language and shove it! There’s no ‘u’ in ‘honor’!”
Personally I like the concept of using ‘zed’ because it disambiguates between ‘c’ and ‘z’.
Whoa, some ad executive just got a raise. Go them.
Actually they got fired promptly when Coors Light bought Molson out. Those adds had been so popular for years and now we’re stuck with these ultra-sexist ads telling guys to drink Molson to pick up mainstream “beautiful” thin blondes. Quite sad. But I suppose Coors wasn’t interested in having patriotic ads running while they owned it. (yes, I’m secretely wishing one day Molson will return to being owned by a Canuck)
This is a few years old. Interestingly I first saw it one of the times I was visiting Toronto. Though for the record, some Canadians do pronounce “about” differently than others.
I tend to spell things with the British “u” just to be an excentric man of colour!
The reason Americans pronounce ‘Z’ “zee” instead of “zed” is because of the alphabet rhyme; ‘zed’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘c’, ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘e’, ‘g’, ‘p’, ‘t’ or ‘v’.
LOL! Woo! That is an excellent reason to change the pronunciation of a word! I was singing ‘Don Gato’ the other day, which tries to rhyme whiskers with solar plexus, and consultation with patient. Clearly we have some pronunciation revision to do. From here forward I shall drop the ‘t’ from patient when talking, and.. um.. I have no idea what to do to get whiskers to rhyme with solar plexus.
Thats an old one, but its good.
I’ve never actually heard a Canadian say “aboot”. Where the hell did that start?