Many things conspire against the survival of such dialectal variations-for example compulsory education, formal education of teachers, the rise of the text(-)book ( more likely to have the hyphen in BrE, no space/hyphen in AmE), and the spread of the "Alphabet Song" (first copyrighted in Boston, Massachusetts in 1835). So, dialectal variation for names of this letter has been found on both sides of the Atlantic. The name‥given to the last letter of the alphabet‥in New England is always zee in the South it is zed. So, zee is not originally AmE, but it came to be decisively AmE, with Noah Webster ( whom we might call the architect of American spelling), specifying in his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language " Z.‥ It is pronounced zee".ĭecisively American, but not always unanimously American, it seems, as the OED also gives this quotation: The names of letters are not often written out, and dialectal names of letters even less so, so goodness knows how long it might have pottered on.) We don't have any citations of zee written in Britain since Lye's spelling book-but this does not mean it was last heard then. (I think we should be a little careful here. In Scotland the letter’s name hasīeen at various times in history ezod and izod. Of izod that arose in an English dialect where speakers liked to insert Or, as I believe but cannot prove, izzard is simply as an r-infix form The Mayflower but very early indeed in American history.Īnother English dialect form is izzard, from mid-eighteenth-century English, perhaps from French et zède meaning and z, or else from s hard. That name was brought to America by British immigrants, perhaps not on One of those names is zee, aĭialect form last heard in England during the late seventeenth century. Its long sojourn at the bottom of the English alphabet: zad, zard, zed, The letter has actually had eight or more names during Bill Cassell at his Canadian Word of the Day site mentions its competitors: Lye was born in Somerset and educated at Oxford, and was preaching and teaching school in London at the time of publication. The OED's first example of zee, on the other hand, is from a 1677 spelling book published in England by Thomas Lye, a non-conformist minister. Zed goes way back in English-the OED's first citations of it are from the 15th century. But there's more still to say about zee and zed. And before that, I mentioned it in my zebra post. which gives you a link to the time before that that I talked about it. (not problems!) are discussed in this old post. Street is no longer broadcast in most of the UK. (2) Fear of 'zee' is a major reason that Sesame (tee-U-vee/double-u-eks-why-and-zee/now I know my ABCs/next time won't In the alphabet song because it rhymes better But still!) I have two zee-related suspicions: (1) Some BrE speakers prefer zee Not happy about it! Ross, Londonįair enough, but why has zed come to us from zeta, but beta hasn't turned up in English as bed? (Because it's come from French and they did it that way. I hear more and more people pronouncing the letter Z as " zee". Here's their Number 46, followed by my reply:Ĥ6. The last time I talked about these was in my grumpy (but reasonably well-informed) reply to BBC News Magazine's (merrily uninformed) grumpfest "Americanisms: 50 of your most noted examples". So: BrE zed versus AmE zee, for the last letter of the English alphabet. Since I feel like it should have had its own post, I shall give it one. Since it's nearly midnight as I start this, I consider myself very lucky to have blindly picked one that I've mostly done before. Toward(s) this end, I've stuck my cursor into the e-mailbox that holds the 'potential bloggables'. Now that the Term from Hell has finished, I'd like to get back to blogging on an at-least-weekly basis.
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