Zee PM or Zed PM, how do you pronounce it?

[GreySpear]

The main problem many people have speaking English is the Grammar, that and sentence structure. Being of Chinese descent, I know what it was like learning English as a second language. Can you imagine what it was like learning two languages simultanously growing up As funny as it may sound, it was Tv that helped me improve my english. I watched quite a few UK shows and emulated the way they talked, soon enough I was speaking English better than Chinese.

[Easter Lily]

The main problem many people have speaking English is the Grammar, that and sentence structure. Being of Chinese descent, I know what it was like learning English as a second language. Can you imagine what it was like learning two languages simultanously growing up As funny as it may sound, it was Tv that helped me improve my english. I watched quite a few UK shows and emulated the way they talked, soon enough I was speaking English better than Chinese.

Hey, I learnt both languages simultaneously too! Chinese wasn't so cool when I was a kid... so I excelled in English and turned into a mini-Anglophile... Queen's English, the BBC, Shakespeare and all that. But now that I'm older and wiser, I wished I had worked harder on my Chinese.
But I did similar things to you... I listened to the BBC World Service as a kid, and learnt to pronounce things there. Of course, being indoctrinated by American tv growing up, I did pick up Americanisms here and there though.

[Chrysalis]

I love Joe Flanigan but I wish somebody would teach him to say Antarctica properly...

OMG! Yes! i love him too, but hello? It's Antarctica, not 'Anortica'. There are two Cs!! Two of them!

[Chrysalis]

What?!... *looks aghast*

Not only do I blame Sesame Street... but I blame Microsoft too... Their grammar checker is highly untrustworthy...

Spell check drives me nuts!
It keeps telling me that colour, centre, theatre, favourite etc. are wrong! A guy who used to work with me was always spelling things in American English and I was always telling him to fix it. He said he spelled it the American way so he didn't get squiggly lines under words!

Bottom line, English English is the correct version, no matter what anyone says, because it's the original.

Yes, other countries have their versions of it, but they're derived FROM English English. To my way of thinking, changing spelling to make it 'easier' for people is a cop out. Life wasn't meant to be easy! And if having a 'u' in a word confuses you, there's something seriously wrong!

[Easter Lily]

It sounds like Anarktica to me... so the Cs aren't the problem but the silent "t"... Strange, really when you think of how much emphasis the Americans place on saying it as it is spelt...

[Willow'sCat]

If in doubt, blame Sesame Street

Oh I blame Sesame Street! My niece calls biscuits, cookies! Who has ever heard of Shortbread cookies?

Now I pronounce the Z as Zed always have always will.

[Chrysalis]

Maybe it would help if you hear that "Yes I do," reply and just mentally add "have them" to the end?

As far as the TV programming, I'm sure a lot of it also has to do with the popularity of American popular culture around the world. Also the production values of American TV programs are (generally) fairly high (the production values (picture/sound quality, sets, etc), not the quality of the programs. LOL).

Trust me, it's about cost. We have plenty of British shows, too, but the majority of TV is American because you're the more prolific producers of TV programs.
It's been a much talked about fact that the cost is what cuts the amount of Australian television being made. We have an on-going battle over Australian content because it costs next to nothing to bring over an American show, no matter what it is, than it does to make something locally. The networks also buy packages. Eg. if they want to get the rights to Desperate Housewives, they have to buy a lot of crap to go with it as part of the deal.

[Easter Lily]

Spell check drives me nuts!
It keeps telling me that colour, centre, theatre, favourite etc. are wrong! A guy who used to work with me was always spelling things in American English and I was always telling him to fix it. He said he spelled it the American way so he didn't get squiggly lines under words!

Hasn't he heard of disabling it or changing it to Australian English... Sheesh... That's the first thing I do everytime I get an update... I disable the grammar checker... It's useless anyway.

Bottom line, English English is the correct version, no matter what anyone says, because it's the original.

Yes, other countries have their versions of it, but they're derived FROM English English. To my way of thinking, changing spelling to make it 'easier' for people is a cop out. Life wasn't meant to be easy! And if having a 'u' in a word confuses you, there's something seriously wrong!

From what I've heard, linguists when berserk with the whole dialect thing at one stage... All varieties were fair game... They went a bit over the top... But personally I think it's best to stick to standard British English or American English. The English used by newsreaders is probably not a bad guide.

If you people are interested in this subject, you should read stuff written by David Crystal. He's considered to be the world's expert on the English language. I've got a couple of his books and even got to shake his hand... hehehe...

[Chrysalis]

I apologize if I'm a little overly passionate about this, but I am seeing a lot of people complaining about the way we speak when their complaints are innacurate and often refer to American slang and not American-English. Very few Americans say "nook-you-lar". In fact WE make fun of Bush because of the way he says it. Also, only just recently has the IUPAC approved the British spelling of Aluminum as Aluminium. The American spelling of Sulfur was chosen over the British Sulphur, so there's plenty to go around. I cringe when I hear "lorry", "g'day", or "university" without an identifier, but I don't complain about it because I respect the way other people talk and because I recognize that it is slang and not official grammar.

To me, sulfur is just another way of going "oh, it's easier for us to spell it this way". By that theory, why not spell elephant as elefant instead? There's no logic to it, except to say "it's easy, that way I don't have to think".

I'm not really understanding why you have issues with the word University. What's the problem with it? You have universities. We say University because that's what our tertiary institutions are. If you talk about college where I live, you're either talking about a TAFE College (which is the equivalent of an American Community College) or a Secondary College (which is the same as an American High School)

Bottom line with me, I hate colour etc without the 'u', hate centre being written as center, and I can't stand seeing words like realise with a 'z'. That's a 'zed', BTW!

[Easter Lily]

Trust me, it's about cost. We have plenty of British shows, too, but the majority of TV is American because you're the more prolific producers of TV programs.

That's where all the money is, anyway.

*toddles off to watch Dr Who*

[Frinky]

I must say, that because of a great deal of American tv, and too much tv in general, I use Zee instead of Zed. Having said that, I always stick to the Australian/British spelling of words...I've grown accustomed to the red squigly lines below my words Although, as has already been mentioned but im bringing it up because its a pet peeve of mine, is the pronunciation of Aluminium as Aluminum...Also, after looking at all the periodic tables i've gatherd inmy last year of high school chemistry, not a single one of them spelt Sulfur as Sulphur! I'd become so accustomed to the 'f' spelling that I didn't even notice until reading this thread! Anyhoo, thats my little rant

[Dorka]

I say ZED, our teacher taught us like that so I hadn't much of a decision bc he'd give us a bad mark if we didn't spell it how he had said we must... (he was from Nordengland)

[walterIsTheMan]

To me, sulfur is just another way of going "oh, it's easier for us to spell it this way". By that theory, why not spell elephant as elefant instead? There's no logic to it, except to say "it's easy, that way I don't have to think".

There is logic to it. Not just to make it easier, but to make it more accurate. It's not for those who speak it, as I said earlier it's for those learning it. Compared to other European languages such as Spanish and French, English is a mess. There is a lot of Anglo-Saxon mixed in with the Latin derivatives and so there are hundreds of inconsistencies. This makes English very difficult to learn, especially as a second language. So yes, the logic is to make it easier, but not so people don't have to think, but so people can learn the language. Immigrants coming to America have enough problems trying to get citizenship, a job, and provide for their family. The last thing they need is to be confused by our complex language.

I'm not really understanding why you have issues with the word University. What's the problem with it? You have universities. We say University because that's what our tertiary institutions are. If you talk about college where I live, you're either talking about a TAFE College (which is the equivalent of an American Community College) or a Secondary College (which is the same as an American High School)

You didn't read what I said, I said using "university" without an identifier. Yes, we do have universities. We talk about them all the time. But we don't say "I'm going to university." We use identifiers.

Bottom line with me, I hate colour etc without the 'u', hate centre being written as center, and I can't stand seeing words like realise with a 'z'. That's a 'zed', BTW!

Lol and that is the real heart of the matter isn't it? It's not about what makes sense or not, it's about what people like. Non-Americans do not like the way we use English, so they criticize. But they overlook the fact that our grammar and spelling (American-English, not American slang) is much more consistent.

In the end though, we should just all go back to speaking Latin. That will clear this whole mess up.

[Avatar28]

Hear hear, Walter. Let's just all speak Ancient like you said and that will just eliminate the whole issue. :-)

As for English English being the original, that's not really true either because it's changed just as much as American English. That's sort of akin to saying that a Mercedes Benz is the only real car because it was the first real car (or at least is widely credited as such). NONE of the modern versions of English are the same as the original anymore. Why don't we just agree that they're both kissing cousins and leave it at that?

As for English's complexity, it doesn't help that the same word can have multiple meanings or you can have different words with different meanings all pronounced exactly (or almost exactly) the same (sell, sail, sale, cell for example). Not to mention all the different words that have the same meanings. I believe I heard somewhere that modern English has something like over twice as many words as the next wordiest language. Craziness.

And for those complaining about the spelling and grammer checkers in Office, have you tried setting the language options to something other than English (United States). There are (at least in my copy of Office 2003 here) settings for a number of different types of English:

English (Australia)
English (Belize)
English (Canada)
English (Caribbean)
English (Hong Kong S.A.R.)
English (India)
English (Indonesia)
English (Ireland)
English (Jamaica)
English (Malaysia)
English (New Zealand)
English (Philippinies)
English (Singapore)
English (South Africa)
English (Trinidad and Tobago)
English (U.K.)
English (U.S.)
English (Zimbabwe)

All of them seem to indicate that they've got at least spelling and possibly grammer check as well. For what it's worth, I went through and checked a few of the words mentioned above as pet peeves, center/centre, color/colour, favorite/favourite, theater/theatre, aluminum/aluminium. With the language set as English (U.S.) it flagged the British versions as incorrect. Once I changed the text to English (U.K) it accepted the British spellings and flagged the U.S. spelling as incorrect.

[Easter Lily]

There is logic to it. Not just to make it easier, but to make it more accurate. It's not for those who speak it, as I said earlier it's for those learning it. Compared to other European languages such as Spanish and French, English is a mess. There is a lot of Anglo-Saxon mixed in with the Latin derivatives and so there are hundreds of inconsistencies. This makes English very difficult to learn, especially as a second language. So yes, the logic is to make it easier, but not so people don't have to think, but so people can learn the language. Immigrants coming to America have enough problems trying to get citizenship, a job, and provide for their family. The last thing they need is to be confused by our complex language.

Well, it's too late...
All languages have their own complexities... but English is probably the most mongrelized. Why don't we pronounce the "b" in subtle as well or pronounce "facade" as fakade... Trying to be consistent after a certain level in English is a lost cause...

You didn't read what I said, I said using "university" without an identifier. Yes, we do have universities. We talk about them all the time. But we don't say "I'm going to university." We use identifiers.

How many kinds of universities are there that you need identifiers for? As far as I know there is only one...

Lol and that is the real heart of the matter isn't it? It's not about what makes sense or not, it's about what people like. Non-Americans do not like the way we use English, so they criticize. But they overlook the fact that our grammar and spelling (American-English, not American slang) is much more consistent.

In the end though, we should just all go back to speaking Latin. That will clear this whole mess up.

Not entirely... there's even some dispute as to how certain sounds are said...