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

[Whistler]

no. but i dont think canadians do either. lol. it may have been a dumb question but it just occured to me while i was reading the thread. so if you crazy canadians pronounce it the same way when using it, then why the difference in pronouncing it by itself? i know that comes off as the arrogant american, thinking everything should be our way, but believe me im not. im not saying either way is right, they are just different, im just curious as to why.

It's a letter! Ay Bee See Dee Eee Eff Gee Hache Eye Jay... etc. when saying the letter seperately you say it they way you were taught to say it! Ask a German why they say "Oopsilon" for Y!

[IMForeman]

ok so if canadians pronounce the letter "Z" as "zed". then how do they say zero? zed-ee-ro? or zee-ro? (those are my attempts at phonetic spelling, sorry)

Nought?

-IMF

[spg_1983]

Well shouldn't you ask yourself why your C and Z are pronounced so similar? Isn't Zed much better? Afterall most letters aren't pronounced the same way in a word as when pronouncing the letter alone.

PS. I'm not even 1% Canadian to my knowledge 75% Swedish and 25% Finnish.

i wouldnt say zed is much better, just different. im simply wondering as to why the difference thats all. its probably some forgotten thing that only a linguist knows anyways.

are you from sweden or just swedish descent? i have a buddy that is doing a semester abroad in sweden is why i ask.

[Whistler]

Nought?

-IMF

Alot of people just use "Oh" for Zero here, saves time...

[zahncrelnik]

zed

[aAnubiSs]

i wouldnt say zed is much better, just different. im simply wondering as to why the difference thats all. its probably some forgotten thing that only a linguist knows anyways.

are you from sweden or just swedish descent? i have a buddy that is doing a semester abroad in sweden is why i ask.

Been living in Sweden my whole life.

[Splitsecond]

zed is the pronuntiation of "z" while zee is the phonetic pronuntiation of "z", so when saying the letter it is zed but in a word it is zee. so it depends on weather you think of zmp as a word or 3 letters.

[Avreana]

The word 'Zed' meaning the letter came to us from the Greek letter 'Zeta' through the French 'Zede'. At some point in the late 1600's the pronunciation changed in the States to 'Zee' for unknown reasons. Probably just a small regional variation that caught on but didn't spread outside the country.

I majored in linguistics, so I had a look through some of my books to see if I could find any mention of why the pronunciation changed in the States. I couldn't really find anything. If anyone else can I'm very interested to learn why!


Also I remember someone mentioning 'Zero'. I believe the word Zero is unrelated to Zed/Zee. I think it came into English a while back from Arabic? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway, I'll stop now. I can ramble for hours on the subject if I don't watch myself

[Beatrice Otter]

The entire name isn't changing though It's not McKay's fault you yankees say Zed wrong is it?

It's not changeing the name. It's still a ZPM--a Zero Point Module. Of course, that's just what we Tau'ri call it. I betcha the Goa'uld and the Asgard have different names for it, and I would be shocked if it was what the Ancients called it.

[MajorSam]

k, it shooould be Zed, but obviously there's over-analyzing (it's a letter for cryin out loud!) i vote everyone should just stick with the phonetics when saying a single letter.

Z=Zulu!

[Manic]

"zed-ero" instead of "zero"? That's like saying "aytch-av-ee" instead of "have."

[ShadowMaat]

Z is Z, but zero has ze. You have the sound right there. And since the first part of Zee and Zed is Zzz, then I don't see a conflict.

This is getting a little ridiculously nitpicky, don't you think?

[alz0rz]

wow these topics qwas...

[Chops]

The word 'Zed' meaning the letter came to us from the Greek letter 'Zeta' through the French 'Zede'. At some point in the late 1600's the pronunciation changed in the States to 'Zee' for unknown reasons. Probably just a small regional variation that caught on but didn't spread outside the country.

I majored in linguistics, so I had a look through some of my books to see if I could find any mention of why the pronunciation changed in the States. I couldn't really find anything. If anyone else can I'm very interested to learn why!


Also I remember someone mentioning 'Zero'. I believe the word Zero is unrelated to Zed/Zee. I think it came into English a while back from Arabic? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway, I'll stop now. I can ramble for hours on the subject if I don't watch myself

I'm also quite interested in linguistics, so I dicided to take a look.

Etymonline.com confirms that zero does come to us from Arabic, but it took a few stops in Middle Latin and Italian first. Before that it came from Sandskrit sunya-m, which can also mean "desert" or "empty place."

I looked up "zed," and found that "other dialectal names for the letter are izzard, ezod, uzzard and zod."

"Alright team, now that you're all here, I'll start the briefing. On P7C-923 we have discovered an Ancient city. Our job is to go in and retrieve the Uzzard PM..."

[MajorSam]

HAHAHA, reminds me of "buzzard" Yeah, I can see that...

*The crazy evil bird flopped and squaked around the temple*

"Wow, we came all the way here, being stranded away from Earth, for...this..."