Why zed for z

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.

According to the North American Regional Vocabulary Survey carried out by linguist Charles Boberg from to , 70 per cent of Canadians now say zed and 28 per cent say zee.

The Gage Canadian Dictionary includes an entry for zed — though not for zee. According to both linguists, zed is an iconic example of the small ways in which Canadians resist American linguistic influence and maintain autonomy see Canadian Identity and Language. However, between and the mids, use of zed among students dropped by 11—15 per cent to stand at 61 per cent, while use of zee increased by over 20 per cent to stand at 34 per cent.

Changes in the way people speak as they mature have lessened the rise of zee and may continue to do so. Like I said, writers rarely need to spell out the pronunciations of letters. Still, there are a few rare instances when you might want to spell out letter pronunciations in standard English characters, like these:. What does zed mean? Zed is the British English pronunciation of the letter Z. Zed is closer to the original Greek zeta , which is probably why some speakers use it.

This pronunciation is common in England and other places that use British English, like Australia and Canada. You can substitute zed for zee in the sentences above without changing the meaning. Zee and Zed are two different ways to pronounce the name of the letter Z out loud. As a writer, you would be more likely to use the letter itself or the IPA in writing. 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.

But precisely how or why it became the predominant form in American English is unclear. 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.