Both terms are pluralizations of words that refer to a single projection attached to the shoe, cleat and stud.
cleatsĪmericans refer to shoes with rubber or metal projections underneath them as cleats while Brits prefer the term studs. In the UK, the game is instead known as draughts after a pluralization of the word draught that was once used to refer to a move in chess. The American and Canadian name for the game of checkers seems to be based on the checkerboard surface the game is played on. Interestingly, unmarried UK men must also be party animals because the term stag party is more commonly used there than bachelor party. So, a bachelorette party in the UK is instead referred to as a hen party, hen night, or hen do. In the UK, the word bachelorette (a combination of the word bachelor and the feminine noun suffix -ette) for an unmarried young woman is less commonly used than it is in the US and Canada. (Scientists have even taken the English language to Antarctica!) But there are two particular groups of English speakers we’ve focused on in this article-and they are the ones who live on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, or what the Brits like to call “the pond.” If you’re curious to learn more about what sets British and American English apart, besides an ocean, you’ll learn more with our guide to the different terms, spellings, and pronunciations of American and British English. THOUGH THE SDSAB DOES ITS BEST, THESE COLUMNS ARE EDITED BY ED ZOTTI, NOT CECIL, SO ACCURACYWISE YOU'D BETTER KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED.🧠 What sets American and British English apart?Įnglish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, and you’ll find its more than 1 billion speakers just about everywhere. Send questions to Cecil via REPORTS ARE WRITTEN BY THE STRAIGHT DOPE SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD, CECIL'S ONLINE AUXILIARY. In my opinion, all we have to do to win the whole language war is to popularize some rhyme with some lines like “Cookies, elevator, french fries, truck don’t say ‘petrol’ or you suck.” Even in England itself, elementary teachers are complaining that they have to re-teach the pronunciation of the letter when 5 and 6 year olds come to school, and when they sing the song, they typically do so with theĪmerican pronunciation. Chambers in a study of kids in Ontario, in which he noted a lessening of the taboo on “zee” in the Canadian schools.
This so-called “Sesame Street Phenomenon” is noted in almost all other English-speaking countries, and was addressed by J.K. The previously mentioned ‘analogy’ with other letters enables you to rhyme the last line of the song, and even a four year old can tell that the line following “q r s, t u v” is not supposed to be “w x, y and ZED”. The plan was, take a catchy tune by some pop composer like, oh, say Mozart, and attach the alphabet to it. We may win the battle yet, though, by indoctrinating British, Australian, and Canadian kids when they’re young. Not that it was an intentional alteration, but there was a regional dialect in the US (and, it must be said, in parts of England) that pronounced it zee (as there were others that pronounced it zad, zard, ezod, izzard, and uzzard), and this was one difference in the vocabulary which was seized upon by post-George III America.Īccording to the Concise Oxford Companion, “The modification of zed … to zee appears to have been by analogy with bee, dee, vee, etc.” You kind of get the feeling that this wasn’t the most important letter of the alphabet, not only from this sloppy attention to its pronunciation, but also by such quotes as Shakespeare’s “Thou whoreson Zed, thou unneccessary letter!” Lye’s New Spelling Book (1677) was the first to list “zee” as aĬorrect pronunciation, and it was pretty much firmed up by Webster, who, like grammarians all over the former Empire, wanted to put the kibosh on all this “izzard” nonsense, and decreed “it is pronounced zee” (1827). Like after the Revolution was an Englishman, or vice-versa. The last thing an American wanted to sound The reason we don’t is because we had a pretty major falling out with the people that did, and in the aftermath, seized on dialectical nuances and amplified them. “Zed” comes from the original Greek zeta via Old French zede, and pretty much all English speakers worldwide pronounce it that way. Why is there a difference between the pronounciations? Arnold Wright BlanĪs usual in most of these matters, it’s we the people of the US that changed it, not the other way around.
Dear Straight Dope: Whenever I hear a person from Britain pronounce the letter Z, they pronounce it “zed” instead of “zee,” as we Americans say it.
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