Last Word On Last Letter: Canada Says “Zed”

by Kevin Burton

   It’s the beginning of a new year, so leave it to Page 7 to take you to the end – of the alphabet that is.

   May I be the first to wish you a very happy International Z Day.

   “Z Day, celebrated on Jan. 1, is a quirky and unique observance dedicated to the often-overlooked letter “Z” in the English alphabet, writes the website whatspecialtoday.com.

   “It’s a day for individuals with last names or entities starting with “Z” to step into the spotlight. This fun and lighthearted holiday is a fantastic way to kick off the new year with a touch of creativity and alphabetic appreciation.”

   Well OK, that’s fine, but when you read my well wishes above, did it sound in your head as “Zee Day” or “Zed Day”?

  If you’re “A-MUR-ican, you almost certainly said zee. Those from the entirety of the rest of the English-speaking world however, say zed.

   I thought we had settled this whole  English language thing with the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. The United States went 2-0 in those titanic struggles. I thought the winners always wrote the history, and in this case I thought that history would be written with zees, not zeds.

   Then I started teaching English in Mexico and learned that neutrals sometimes choose British English as more proper, perhaps because of the classier British accent, possibly due to disdain for  booty-shaking American disco music.

   In the UK it’s zed. Here in the US, we say zee.  Why?

   “One widely-held theory is that because zed, as the older of the two, was the most widespread variation amongst British English speakers, during the Revolutionary War American English speakers looking to distance themselves from anything even vaguely British simply adopted the zee version as their own to make a stand—no matter how small it might seem—against British control,” writes Paul Anthony Jones on the Mmetric system, border, ental Floss website.

   Since he writes for Mental Floss, I assume Jones can diagram that last jaw-breaker of a sentence, but I don’t think I can.

   “Because 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,” reads a story on the website todayifoundout.com. “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.”

   “In Great Britain, if someone is talking about a large group of things, they’ll say “everything from A to Zed.” This phrase probably sounds foreign and clunky to our “zee”-accustomed American ears,” writes an altogether different Jones person, Meghan Jones, in Reader’s Digest.

   “But it’s not just the United Kingdom that uses “zed”; it’s what you’ll hear in every English-speaking country, besides the United States, which adheres firmly to “zee.”

   “America certainly has a habit of insisting on doing things differently from the rest of the world,” Meghan Jones writes. “ from its non-metric system of measurement to Fahrenheit temperatures. But when it comes to “zee,” it actually does make a degree of sense.”

   My formal education began in a British territory, the island of Bermuda. I do believe that Mrs. Wolf taught us that A was for apple, B was for ball, and so on through the letters until zee, – not zed – was for zebra.

   But I attended a school for the children of American servicemen.  We pledged allegiance to the American flag each morning, though they did teach us how to curtsey, which is not something that Americans do, as far as I know.

   I thought our northern neighbor Canada might have our back on this zee-zed thing.  After all, our two nations have the longest but also the most peaceful border in the world. We get along.

   Their words float over the border, as did the smoke from their forest fires two summers ago.  It used to be that Canadian quarters would work in American vending machines.  I purchased more than one Coca Cola as a kid using the Queen’s coinage. 

   Imagine my disappointment to see this from the Canadian Encyclopedia:

   “Zed is the name of the letter Z. The pronunciation zed is more commonly used in Canadian English than zee,” writes Eli Yarhi on the Canadian Encyclopedia website.   “English speakers in other Commonwealth countries also prefer the pronunciation zed.

   “As zed is the British pronunciation and zee is chiefly American, zed represents one of the rare occasions in which most Canadians prefer the British to the American pronunciation,” according to the encyclopedia. “Use of zee is often stigmatized among Canadian English speakers, which is likely the reason why zee has not taken root as quickly as other influences from American English.”