Zee versus zed

[Ohwhatfuckeryitistoride]

This week I've been running visual acuity tests for year 7s. I soon noticed that about 80% of them say zee instead of zed. Now I know language changes etc, it's a mix of us influences and maybe learning phonics in primary, but it made me feel unaccountably sad.
Do your kids say zed or zee?

This sounds very American 😄

Am-a-zen vs Am-a-ZON.

Same!

I make up for it by said J to rhyme with I rather than Jay to rhyme with K though 😁

Someone on another thread is talking about boiling "soothers". Ugh!

I’m in Wales. They don’t. Not near me anyway (I’ve liveD West, mid and South).

Oh I can roll out my Nike anecdote. In a former life I worked in housing benefits in a big Northern city. Young mum with a little girl, I’m going through her form and said, “oh is this Nike (pronounced Nikey)” “Nikey, Nikey? Who the fucks Nikey, you daft snobby bitch? It’s NIKE, you fuckwit.” Open plan office sectioned off with dividers, went back to get another form and the whole team were falling about(silently)

Yep re. "movies". We've had a Film Night at the social club in my village every week for about ten years, and now they're advertising "next week's movie". Heaven knows why they needed to change it.

The little girl was called Nike, rhymes with Mike? Bloody hell, should've asked MN!

@cardibach when I was re-training in a healthcare field, all the Welsh students and lecturers said En-haitch-ess.

Do you mean soothers like dummies? They were soothers in my Irish house growing up, I'm 40.

We had subs or substitute teachers too, not supply.

These threads are always full of people who seem to have no idea that people in other areas speak differently to them. And not everything different is <gasp> an Americanism.

Don't think I’ve ever heard it. From anyone, but certainly not in the bits of Wales I’ve lived in. Again, must be regional. Still wrong though.

_@cardibach very wrong! Does my head in!

It's not wrong. IIRC haitch is older than aitch, and the H was dropped to appear posher and more French. Both haitch and aitch are correct now.

As I mentioned above, the pronunciation is a shibboleth here in NI. If I insisted in the workplace that one or the other was correct I would find myself up before HR (that's haitch oar ) for sectarianism.

The Z/ZED issue has succumbed to the American influence through children's TV programmes. Always was zed in the UK until this song came along and swamped the UK channels ...

my grandparents also said Zee and they were around long before television became mainstream never mind transmitting American shows. They were born over 100 years ago.

And we’re all Scottish

They do a zed version of that song too.

I learned the alphabet that way nearly 50 years ago. Took a couple of years, but my mother eventually managed to knock the zees out of me.

I don't get fussy about how kids of many different ethnicities and home languages have learned English. There's more important things than stifling their speech.

Read this book. It’s very well-researched and throws up some interesting information!

Interesting as I'm an optician and have started noticing this loads! Definitely in kids but noticing it now in older adults too!

Well, when DS was little he had two videotapes of the Teletubbies. He often talked about Po and her scoot-ah, which we thought was adorable. He only had his British accent for a little while, but we still say, "scoot-ah."

In Shetland southerns are called soothmoothers and so I read that as 'southerners' and was very confused as to why anyone would be boiling them 😂.

The central belt saying djai for J is interesting, in Orkney the letter J is pronounced ch so e.g. James becomes Chames. Presumably in Orkney's case it's a Norn influence.

Something slightly similar - I listen to some podcasts - and it's interesting how one that is done by someone who is British, who is a British journalist and who presents on Radio 4 alters his podcast so he uses American words.

e.g. flashlight for torch, math for maths etc.

Clearly the podcast is popular in the USA or is sponsored by an American company so he alters it slightly - but noticeably for someone who I know is British.

One of my Scouts, born and bred in Wales has an American accent and says flashlight instead of torch. I have to resist correcting him every time ...