In Britain, the last letter of the alphabet is known as zed. If your name is Lizzie, you spell it with two zeds. If you're from England, Canada, or New Zealand, the alphabet ends with zed, while in the U.S. it's pronounced zee.
It was only some centuries after the Norman Conquest that this letter was introduced when English once again began to be written. The name for this letter was thus borrowed from the French: zed. The most common form of this letter was thus the one that is now standard in the UK and other countries.
Zed is widely known to be used in British English. But it's also used in almost every English-speaking country. In England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Australia, India, Canada (usually), and New Zealand, Z is pronounced as zed.
According to The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2nd edition), the word zed is derived from the French word for the same letter, zède, as well as from the Latin and Greek word for the letter zeta. There were many historic names for the letter Z, including zad, zard, ezed, ezod, izod, izzard and uzzard.
Spanning the range from “traditional” accents like Brummie, Cockney, Geordie or Scouse to newer accents like Estuary English, British Asian English and General Northern English, accents in the UK reflect differences in what region people come from, their family's social class background, their age and their current ...
What letter was removed from the English alphabet?
The ampersand isn't the only former member of the alphabet. Learn what led to the extinction of the thorn and the wynn. We'll have you singing your ABCs all day long with our explorations into letters, including the remarkable W and the confounding Q, both of which have a history and relationship with the letter U.
In most English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom, the letter's name is zed /zɛd/, reflecting its derivation from the Greek letter zeta (this dates to Latin, which borrowed Y and Z from Greek), but in American English its name is zee /ziː/, ...
In British English "nought" is also used and in American English "naught" is used occasionally for zero, but (as with British English) "naught" is more often used as an archaic word for nothing. "Nil", "love", and "duck" are used by different sports for scores of zero.
Early church leaders in Great Britain may have encouraged Christian followers to be happy rather than engage in merrymaking! In this sense, Happy Christmas is a bit more conservative and reserved than Merry Christmas, which conveys a more emotional, unrestrained celebration.
Nevertheless, other British chemists decided to adopt the name Aluminium. They thought it had a more classical sound and was in line with the ending of the other elements isolated by Davy. This confusion began the debate on the ending of the word that continues to our day.
In English, the pronunciation of ⟨h⟩ as /h/ can be analyzed as a voiceless vowel. That is, when the phoneme /h/ precedes a vowel, /h/ may be realized as a voiceless version of the subsequent vowel. For example, the word ⟨hit⟩, /hɪt/ is realized as [ɪ̥ɪt].
'Z' is called "zed" everywhere in the world, not only in English but also in French, German, and most other languages, except in the United States, where it is called "zee". Hence "zee" is an American shibboleth. In Southern Ontario, the pronunciation of Z as "zee" is stigmatized, as might be expected.
