I am unable to figure out how to insert the graphic in this reply, hence, I have just posted the URL. In light of such development, it may be very likely that white English speakers throughout the world will encounter the Indian accents — there are many — and, maybe, even adopt one, for wider market reach or other reasons, whether they like it or not.
Well I certainly haven t seen the same arguments as you as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Irelanders, just shout their superiority while claiming we Americans are obnoxious. They claim they are right and we are wrong…not us…read the question…no one ever expressed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Irelanders were wrong…they jumped to that conclusion out of their own inferiority.
What happened? Same phenomenon is happening now. Second generation kids if they speak Spanish at all, do so only with the older generation. I love seeing this kind of thing on websites like this… Humans, arguing for years over petty and insignificant ordeals. You people fail to realize that we all live on this Earth.
Generalization and stereotyping are a hindrance and should be abolished from modern society. We all have out own idiosyncrasies. You Europeans always bash Americans for being inferior and having a superiority complex about themselves, always thinking they are better than everyone else but in doing so unwittingly become hypocrites because you yourselves are speaking through your own superiority complex. You are trying to prove how much better you are than they by doing the same thing they are which in the end makes you no better.
Decades worth of cultures from around the world combining on a central location to create what you know and love today. Most people defend The country through extreme patriotism but that same patriotism has blinded you with delusions of grandeur. This comments sections proves that both sides have ignorance. To hate and berate people solely basen on where they live and how they talk or type is a prime example.
We Humans are all guilty of it and in the end it all points back to us being the same. We may live on in separate continents, speak different languages and live completely different lives but wise or not we are all homo sapiens sapiens. Embrace that fact and try getting along for once. I do not put myself above anyone else. Very little is the same in the US as it is in Britain or most of the world for that matter.
Yeah, a lot of bad shit happened along the way slavery, racism, etc. What continent are you from? Yeah, except that, really, nobody in America says that. We just say Zee and are fine with the English saying it another way.
The Brits, however, spend an enormous amount of time telling Americans why we they are wrong about this word or that word, among other things. Which I always found kind of funny because of our proximity to the States. Funny how language evolves. Canadians still spell a lot of words like our British counterparts: centre, theatre, colour, favourite, yet we feel a closer connection with the States… for the most part! Americans Improved upon it, as we do everything. A letter in the alphabet should not be said as a word which makes it sound totally different from the letter itself.
The buzz, called in phonetics as a voiced consonant, is a distinct sound formation used throughout the alphabet. There are many languages, as well as some dialects of English, that have more difficulty distinguishing the two, due to various reasons, such as a lack of important phonetic difference. Then you need to get your hearing checked. And how often do you hear people say zee? Do you confuse cany and zany? That Monty Python movie was very cany!
We should consider ourselves lucky to be able to communicate easily with such a large portion of the world and not squabble about petty differences. Neither are wrong in the local area so I try to adapt to their standard.
If I were to write a generic e-mail to all groups, personally I would use British English, as I view it as a more accurate way of spelling. However, in their respective country it really should be spelt as flavour, metre and traveller. For a long time the word cheque literally meant nothing to me.
It is one of the few british words that irritates me. Another difference is not so much about spelling as it is word forms. For instance, I noticed you used the word spelt, which is grammatically correct. However if you dictated that comment to me, I probably would have written down spelled which is also grammatically correct.
Have you ever heard of context? Loads of words have multiple meanings. You must remember that most of these difference occurred before spelling of English was standardized.
Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster chose different forms as the started the process. But neither is better. International practice is when writing to a group, that you write in your native dialect as that favors one group the least and is natural and not contrived. Fact is that just about all modern language is derived from some other ancient languages. So if you want to go by the rule that whoever was first is speaking correctly, it would be anyone who actually speaks an ancient language fluently.
That aside, each country is entitled to their own language and grammar guidelines. Otherwise, I say Zee. All language is just a human construct, and will die with the death of the last human. Stop worrying about dumb nonsense. Uhhm, someone else can dig the research if they wish, but I read, a long time back, that the last letter was actually originally pronounced as Zee in middle ages or sometime Britain.
Bit as others have pointed out, does it matter? Maybe it does, eventually, once we have worked out how to live harmoniously together, in peace despite gender, race or religion.
It is strange to break the consistency of pronunciations to make this one letter different than the rest. Unless there is clear, logical reasoning for a difference, of which there is none in this case, then consistency should be upheld.
Well being a true Brit I of course say Zed. But as stated below the fact Britons understand Americans better than they understand us and the majority of the world to that matter simply says that the Brits have a good understanding of the English language.
Id so, the majority world view of Brits, seems to be sadly mistaken. Many Brits express the opinion that being British means that they are automatically experts on the linguistic history of their own country and that Americans are always or almost always wrong in any opinion they express.
The responses will be filled with declarations from self-identified British people insisting that the Americans say or spell or pronounce the word in question differently because A, Americans are stupid, B. Americans are pretentious, C. Americans are just trying to upset the poor put-upon Brits by deliberately misspelling, mispronouncing, etc.
The logic if you can call it that is usually that since they are English, their sweeping pronouncements about the English language MUST be correct, regardless of the facts.
It is seen in every comment section of this website that deals with varying pronunciations or spelling differences between British and American speakers of English. Even regarding this article,, which clearly states that the Zee pronunciation dates back to at least , Americans are accused of fabricating this non-British spelling.
The problem is that a majority of the words or idioms that British commenters routinely criticize as nonsense created by stupid or jealous Americans are in fact Britishisms that Americans had nothing to do with creating. The British simply do not know the history of their own language and have no interest in learning it because, apparently, they have convinced themselves that they are incapable of being wrong.
The fact that the original pronunciation of the word, with a silent H, has been used in England since the 13th century, and continued to be used right up until Victorian times in the UK is ignored or denied. But of course it is the past participle of get, used by Brits for centuries, then discarded for some unknown reason..
There are literally hundreds of examples of this sort of thing. Any linguist worth his or her salt, will tell you that British English has changed more in the last years than American English has. Clearly Brits do not know their own language nearly as well as they think they do, and if they would only learn to use google, or open the Oxford English dictionary, they would see how uninformed they are and perhaps make fools of themselves less often not directing this at you BTW but at Iinterweb Brits in general.
Thank you, Ell. It affected America as well transatlantic accent but has since mostly receded in the US and really taken hold and continued to branch out in England. You can get off hour soapbox. This preserves both the rhyme and the traditional pronunciation. Has anyone else heard it this way? The single e spelling should have had the symbol denoting it is a long e and not a short.
Why retain the Greek pronunciatiom for one letter? I see your point. There has been much mention of the alphabet song here, the one like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. When I was young, I learned the alphabet to an entirely different tune. I will try to get it across using solfa. Thus the end of the 2nd line, emm, has a vowel rhyme with the end of the 4th line, ZED!
The alphabet fits the tune better as if the tune was specially written for the purpose. British misspell allot of word like tyre is tire Z is not Zed it is simple Zee Z its not hard. Britian is Great country not allot wrong in the school system and how allot is done. But different cultures do different things but as far as this explanation of the letter Z of course some of you find it easier because that all you know but it is still longer to deal with Z is just Z.
This Great country of England if wrong in allot of areas but who knows could be right in some. The argument here about the correct pronunciation of the letter Z is quite ridiculous. We should be grateful that there is at least a common language that the peoples around the world can communicate and understand. Whether is is spoken with a British, American, Asian, African or whatever accent there is. Thomas Lye was from Somerset in England and an author as per wikipedia. But native English speakers tend to pronounce a particular word sometimes differently from one another or spell differently for the same word.
Does that mean one is wrong and the other is right in the way they speak or spell? However, it has evolved in many ways throughout the years. Because they thought the French culture in every way was the culture for the elite.
My point is, the English language is not a stagnant language. It is a very dynamic language and native English speakers whether from Europe, the Americas, or from down under should not be arguing who is more correct.
There are more important issues to be argued about than the correct pronunciation of a letter. Another point, even the native English speakers of the USA, UK and other places, they have their own accents or way of speaking English depending on where they are from within their own country. Not all Brits speak like their queen and not all Americans speak Ivy League. Thank goodness or it would be such a boring language.
One day, even knowing about the existence of the letter Z will be a status symbol to the Brawno drinking masses. English is and always has been a growing and developing language, adding to, adopting and altering all it comes in contact with. Irritating to some American spelling may be, but I was told Webster was trying to make the words easier to spell when he wrote his dictionary.
As well as having to provide a translation if we wished to read any previously printed material! Another pet peeve is American date format.
They are the only country in the world who write date month-day-year instead of the logical day-month-year or the even more logical ISO year-month-day.
Reading the comments it never ceases to amaze me that people actually get upset at things like this. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
October 31, Daven Hiskey comments. Enjoy this article? Answers Featured Facts. Dan January 6, am. Mike February 27, am. No, you clot. Shakespaere sounded more like a cornish or westcountry person than an American. Xu Zu April 5, pm. But in the practical usage, I never heard people say [zed] , but they always say [zi:] So when shall we say [zed]? Or such pronunciation is totally archaic and not used in the modern English.
Improve this question. Also asked on English. SE — mkennedy. They actually did an extended joke on this in a TV series, where some of the characters were American and some Canadian. As far as I know only Americans and those who copy Americans say "zee". The abbreviations don't make a difference, unless the pronunciation clearly depends on it.
British people would never say zee in an abbreviation, unless there is a good phonetic reason like Luke's example. Most British people would spell it in full the American way, but all would say the abbreviated form as dee-em-zed. Illogically, I would say dee-em-zed for the thing in Korea, but dee-em-zee for a firewalled-off portion of a computer network.
Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Very simple. Br Eng is 'zed'. Am Eng is 'zee'. Improve this answer. WOW, really?! I didn't have a clue. Even more, I've never heard younger British speakers to say zed. Could they moved to zee as well? It's possible - the transpondian shift is strong.
Most Canadian kids dread math class. Most American kids too. British kids don't like maths. Canadians know you can sit on a Chesterfield. Americans probably wonder why we'd sit on an old British guy. The 'eh' is one of the most unique features of spoken Canadian English. It's easy to see why.
You can use it to express agreement It's cold out, eh , surprise Fin' eh! Two-four, mickey, twenty-sixer. If you're a Canadian who drinks all these words will be familiar. You'll get a blank stare if you use them anywhere else in the world. News U.
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