Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Why zed?

So, I've been curious. In Canada and New Zealand and possibly other countries, the name of the letter Z is pronounced "Zed" (as a certain IRC quit line recently reminded me).

I'm wondering why.

Just about every consonant in the alphabet has a name which includes the sound the letter makes an an "e" sound either before or after. Let's go through the consonants.

Bee. Cee. Dee. Ef. Gee. H is odd, but I think that's because it makes a sound which is difficult to pronounce by itself and even more so with an "e" sound attached. Jay and Kay are odd, but that's to distinguish them from G and C, respectively (and G and J are pronounced the other way in French). El. Em. En. Pee. Q is odd, but that's because it's Q (the only letter which must be paired with another specific letter). It also kind of overlaps with C and K. Not sure why R is an exception. Es. Tee. Vee. W was named "double u," because that's what it looks like. At least there's a reason for it breaking the pattern. Ex. Y, like H, is almost a vowel, so it needed to be irregular.

Finally... Zee. It fits the pattern along with about 75% of the remaining consonants.

Why on Earth would you suddenly decide to pronounce it Zed? It doesn't fit with anything. There's no reason for it that I can see. The worst thing is that it completely ruins the ending of the Alphabet Song, which relys on that regularity to rhyme the letters at key points.

Ay bee cee dee ee eff gee
aitch eye jay kay el em en oh pee
que arr ess tee yu vee
double-yu ecks why and... zed???
Now I know my Ay Bee Cees
Next time, won't you sing with me?

It just doesn't work!

So, do you say "zee" or "zed"? What countries use which?

If you do say "zed," do you have any idea why?

Paul

Firstly, just because something fits a pattern doesn't make it the correct pronunciation (although I can't see any pattern in your post). As far as I know, "Zee" is the American way of saying 'Z', and "Zed" is the Australian, New Zealand, British, and others way of saying Z.

Nobody suddenly decided to pronounce it Zed. Actually, the Americans changed their version of the letter Z from the proper English version:

In almost all forms of Commonwealth English, the letter is named zed, reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta. Other European languages use a similar form, e.g. the French zède, Spanish and Italian zeta, and Dutch zet.

The American English form zee derives from an English late 17th-century dialectal form, now obsolete in England (although it allows the letter to rhyme with "V" in the "Alphabet song" nursery rhyme).


In Shakespeare's King Lear Z is used as an insult. A character is called "Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter!" (II.ii), intimating that Z (in Shakespearean English at any rate) is a useless letter, like the person on the receiving end of the insult.

I find such threads always a bit difficult, without the IPA symbols we will surely talk about different sounds.

Take "C", you write 'Cee' to show the sound, I could write the same to show the sound in German, but the pronunciation is very different. The best way to show it would probably be 'Tse', though I'm not entirely sure how you pronounce that.

The "H" is 'Haa' in German, but unfortunately I don't know how to show you the proper pronunciation for that, maybe when I'm less lazy and hunt the character set for the IPA symbols.
Bascially "H" is just exhaling with your mouth wide open.

"Z" is named 'Zet', but the German 'z' is unvoiced and a hard sound in comparison to the voiced English "z".
"W" would be 'Wee', and "Y" is 'Ypsilon'.

Ok, lets do the whole alphabet, but remember, pronuciation might be different from what you expect.
Aa
Be
Tse
De
Ee
Ef
Ge
Ha
Ii
Jot
Ka
El
Em
En
Oo
Pe
Qu (Ku)
Er
Es
Te
Uu
Vau (Fau)
We
Ix (Iks)
Ypsilon
Zet
and the special letters
Ä
Ö
Ü
SZet (for the letter ß)

Paul,

Just so you know, when I was at primary school, we learned the alphabet song... complete with "zed".

Mind you, we also used to get Sesame Street on television here, so I was aware that it sounded a little... odd. Even to my wonderfully British ears.

Aurora: thank you for your post! Very educational. I didn't know half of that stuff; for me, I learned to say "zed" because that's how we do things over here. I'm delighted to know that there is a better reason.

Chris (who must go outside. The sun is out for the first time in days, and the light level (at midday) has got beyond twilight.)

Chris

Haha Paul! I've never given it that much thought. I'm Canadian and actually often say Zee (probably from having watched too much American TV as a kid) only to have everyone around correct me.

Jackie

I say zed but once in a while if I am with a group and we sing the song, it may come out as zee. I like zed b/c it is another thing that I try to hold on to for Canadian/British and historical reasons.

Well, actually, Paul, if you think about it, the letter W isn't exactly pronounced as it's sounded - as your own post shows. After all, my name is not pronounced Double-You-End-Ee...

Zed. It makes total and complete sense to me and always has... and I know I'll be understood in the vast majority of the English-speaking countries in the world by pronouncing it Zed. Also, without it we'd lose that wonderfully descriptive name for a folding camp bed: the Zed-Bed.


Wendy

W, I don't think that Paul was trying to show that all letters are pronounced in a logical fashion <g> But it's obvious where "double u" came from, whereas "zed" is a mystery to us poor Americans

I had no idea it was from the Greek, but that makes sense. I mean, I'd heard of zeta, but not connected it with "zed." So that was cool. Thanks, Aurora

And yeah, one would hate to lose a fun name like "zed-bed" Of course, the American way, we can creatively misspell "easy" as EZ So there are advantages each way, I'm thinking.

And they say the Internet isn't educational...

PJ

So, basically, what you're saying is that there's the old way, based on tradition and evolution from previous forms. Then some guys came along, cleaned things up a bit, made the language more regular and logical, and helped smooth out the extraneous stuff (like taking out the extra Us). The traditionalists refused to go along with it, because "that's not how we do things." So, even though one makes more sense, it's less popular. Like Esperanto. Or the Metric System.

(In case that's not clear... I'm kidding.)

Seriously, thanks for the info. I do find this sort of thing interesting. Nice to know where it comes from, even if it doesn't fit the pattern. To me, once you have an established system (for something that should be basic and logical), there should be a good reason for any deviations. (And yes, irregular verbs also irk me. Be - am, are, was, were... huh??) Evolution from other languages makes sense, though, and it's cool to know.

(Sorry, BTW, if the original post came off as at all hostile. That's what I get for writing at that hour. It was mostly genuine curiousity, with a hint of playful teasing or something along those lines. All too often, though, I forget how hard it is to get the latter across in plain text.)

Here, BTW, "cee" is a homophone of "see" and "sea." "Tse" is something I'm more used to seeing in connection with the Hebrew letter Tsadik.

So, thanks for the explanation and the discussion, guys. I guess I'll keep calling it Z, you can go around calling it Z, and we'll all be happy.

Paul

P.S. Yeah - what Pam said.

Just adding to Aurora's information.

from this website
Also, I did my elementary school from India, where they pronounce Zed (inspired from the British system). However, when I transferred to United Arab Emirates (which was also under the British rule but now is more often "inspired" by the US) all the students called it Zee.

~Ankit.

Aussie bred so I tend to say zed, but sometimes I do revert to saying zee. The alphabet is an interesting thing, according to my dad, the South Vietnamese system doesn't (or should that be didn't?) have a V intead the 'V' sound is substituted with a 'Y' so in effect Vietnam in southern Vietnamese sounds more like 'Yietnam.' H is also interesting because in French there is no H sound because most words starting with an H the second letter is a vowel so hotel is spelt (is I remember correctly) l'hotel and pronouced as 'lotel.'

So to be honest, it depends on where you were brought up and how ou were influenced, but z is pronouced zed in most British speaking countries.

Maybe you say Zed to separate it from Cee...

/Mona