Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 22727 – 976

Here’s the haps:

“It’s a good thing we won that Revolutionary War or we’d all be speaking English today.”

Americans are almost the only ones to end the alphabet by pronouncing the last letter, “zee.” The rest of the English-speaking world says, “zed.” Apparently, the reason is that the pronunciation is similar to its Greek origin, “Zeta” and the pronunciation of “zed” is actually older. I listened to the very familiar “A, B, C” song and sure enough, the British version ends with zed instead. This sounded incredibly strange to my ear and messed with my head.

For one thing, it doesn’t even rhyme or fit the song! You have the lilting sound of “t, u, v,” which fits the music nicely, only to finish with “w, x, y, and zed‽” Unimaginable.

This is how I learned it:

The Collins Dictionary blog, Language Lover’s Blog did a great job explaining clearly the differences in UK and US spelling in their post titled 9 Spelling Differences Between British and American English.

Thanks to all of youse guys who have followed me to the end of this challenge. As someone once said a long time ago that I just made up (or recalled. Sometimes the lines blur), “I like to say ‘mucho’ to all my Spanish-speaking friends. It means a lot to them.“

Now I am tired
I want to go to bed
So, if you please
I’ll catch some zees
And you may keep your zeds

💤💤💤💤