They’d just won a war, their independence and freedom.
#Zed or zee alphabet free
I’m British and I have never heard anyone say coloeyr or neighboeyr.Īnd I hardly think that the free American colonies decided to drop a u to stick it to us Brits. The real answer involves piracy… and I mean the kind involving boats! Might be a written version of it on this site as well (I don’t come here much). hasn’t officially switched to metric, about which the Today I Found Out channel on Youtube posted a video. Oh, and there’s actually a semi-decent explanation for why the U.S. However, one can also argue that emphasizes the point Americans won’t switch to the metric system but even we were willing to switch from “zed” to “zee”. how we pronounce “b” as “bee” instead of “bed” when “b” is derived from the Greek ß (beta).Ģ) Is might undermine the further argument about how people started pronouncing “z” as “zee”, bringing it in line with how other Greek-based letters are pronounced in English, and how official American English is one of the few that didn’t stubbornly stick to tradition. The Symbol for the Pound or Number Key (#) on the Telephone is Also Called an Octothorpeġ) Americans using American customary units of measure doesn’t refute the notion that pronouncing “z” as “zed” because the letter is derived from the Greek “Z” (zeta) is inconsistent with how other letters in the English alphabet are pronounced e.g.The Ampersand Symbol Used to Be Part of the Alphabet.The Swastika in Buddhism Represents Universal Harmony.The “X” in “Xmas” Doesn’t Take the “Christ” Out of “Christmas”.If you liked this article, you might also like: The letters Z and Y are the only two letters Latin borrowed directly from Greek, rather than getting them from Etruscan.This tune is also used for such children’s songs as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Baa, Baa, Black Sheep. The alphabet song is based on the French “Ah, vous dirai-je, maman”, which popped up in 1761 and a couple decades later Mozart used it in his Twelve Variations on Ah, vous dirai-je, maman.Other pronunciations of “z” you might hear in the English speaking world include: zod, zad, zard, ezod, izzard, and uzzard. Naturally, kids are often resistant to this change owing to the fact that “tee, u, vee, w, x, y and zed, Now I know my A-B-Cs, Next time won’t you sing with me” just doesn’t quite sound as cohesive as “tee/vee/zee/me”.īecause of the problem at the end of the alphabet song with “zed” not really fitting, a variety of other endings have been created to accommodate this, such as this one: This has resulted in them often having to re-teach children the “correct” pronunciation of “z” as “zed”, with the children having previously learned the song and the letter the American English way from such shows as Sesame Street. There still was a variety of common pronunciations in North America after this but by the 19th century, this changed in the United States with “zee” firmly establishing itself thanks to Noah Webster putting his seal of approval on it in 1827, and, of course, the Alphabet song copyrighted in 1835, rhyming “z” with “me”.īecause of the alphabet song, the pronunciation of “z” as “zee” has started to spread, much to the chagrin of elementary school teachers the English speaking world over. The first known instance of “zee” being recorded as the correct pronunciation of the letter “z” was in Lye’s New Spelling Book, published in 1677.
This gave rise to the Old French “zede”, which resulted in the English “zed” around the 15th century.Īs to why people in the United States call “z”, “zee”, it is thought that this is likely simply adopted from the pronunciation of the letters “bee”, “cee”, “dee”, “eee”, “gee”, “pee”, “tee”, and “vee”. The British and others pronounce “z”, “zed”, owing to the origin of the letter “z”, the Greek letter “Zeta”. The primary exception, of course, is in the United States where “z” is pronounced “zee”. The vast majority of the English speaking world does this.
It’s not just the British that pronounce “z” as “zed”. Jack asks: Why do the British pronounce “Z” as “Zed”?
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