What makes you so special where you can act as victims? Britain is an island…they complain about US calling ourselves America. However, they ignore their subjects in Northern Ireland. The English language by definition originates from England, I am sure that we can all agree on that? However, believe it or not, replacing the S with Z is not an American thing at all.
But this actually goes further, for some unknown reason Americans do not have a ground floor e. Although I am Irish, to me English is the language of England and we should respect that and follow along those lines. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your view, England cannot claim any sort of guardianship or stewardship of the English language [any more].
More people speak English as a second language than speak it as a first. On the other hand, my criticism at Americans is the general ignorance toward the language they have acquired.
Umm what? Usually elevators are either G ground 1, 2, 3, etc. Sometimes there is no G, just 1, 2, 3. Also IDK if this is common or just an American thing, but many elevators and buildings will not have a 13th floor. 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. For the most part, however, Canadian English follows the American influence, with Canadians preferring flashlight to torch and diaper to nappy , for example.
Zed is perhaps the most iconic instance of Canadians preferring the British term to the American. But that was not always the case. Still, evidence suggests that children were taught to say zee in school. Canadian linguist J. In the end, education reform led by Egerton Ryerson in the s standardized school textbooks in anglophone Canada West Ontario , settling on British books and removing American textbooks from classrooms see Curriculum Development.
Eventually, zed gained preference over zee. According to a linguistic study by M. Scargill, zed was preferred by English-speakers across Canada — except in Newfoundland. Between 72 and 79 per cent of Canadians said zed, while 11 to 15 per cent said zee ; the remaining respondents said either zed or zee. Since then, preference for zee has been on the rise, while zed has been on the decline. However, the change has been far less pronounced than in other examples: change in preference for the term couch over chesterfield , or gutters over eavestroughs , has been more acute.
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. Historically, both zed and zee were used pretty much interchangeably in both British and American English, alongside a whole host of other more outlandish names for the last or rather, second last letter of the alphabet, like izzard , uzzard , zad , shard and, our personal favorite, ezod.
The name zee itself is thought to have originated as nothing more than a dialect variation of zed , probably influenced by the regular bee , cee , dee , ee pattern of much of the rest of the alphabet.
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