Hey, ya dumb (and smarmy) rodents, feel free to knock off as many of Kanuckistan's superfluous U's as you can while you're at it !!!
Posted on 06/09/2007 10:23:35 AM PDT by Clive
Is Zed dead?
Those Bell Canada beavers are popping up all over town. One of their billboards gives me a shiver, so near to Canada Day.
A poetic rodent tells us:
From A to Z
The calls are free
I am about to call Bell and point out Zed does not rhyme with free. Then it hits me.
Holy cow, that treasonous beaver is talking American.
Canadian schoolkids know we say Zed, not Zee.
Or do they?
"You mean, it's not Zee?" says my 17-year-old son.
No, Jackson. Not here or in Britain or Australia, Germany, Japan, France or Timbuktu.
Not in New Zealand. Not even in Dutch Zeeland. Nor in Zingapore.
So, let's do something about those Bell signs.
"You're pissing in the wind, Mike," Bill Casselman tells me down the line from Dunnville. Bill's latest book is Canadian Words and Sayings.
(Pipsisewa, by the by, now there's an all-Canadian word. It's a kind of aboriginal root beer.)
"Say bye-bye to Zed," says Bill. "Zee is taking over. When our kids start saying it, you know all their kids will.
"The surveys show people under 30 use Zee.
'Language is alive'
"You can jump up and down and say, boo-hoo, we've lost yet another Canadianism, but you can't do a %#@*&$#@ thing about it."
You don't sound too broken up, Bill.
"There's no morality involved in this. If a language is alive, it changes.
"If Canadians decide Zed is out, then it's out."
And it's happening fast. Only seven years have passed since Molson's Joe Canadian first electrified us with his belief "that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal.
"A tuque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch, and it is pronounced Zed not Zee. Zed!"
Speaking of which, who the hell says chesterfield any more?
"And that hasn't exactly affected our sovereignty," Dr. Ileana Paul tells me. She's a linguistics prof at the University of Western Ontario.
"We still hold our identity and an English that is different from American English."
True. It's still the Grey Cup. Grey is still a colour, though Canadian newspapers only recently revived the "u."
We still ask for the bill, not the cheque, and certainly not the check. We don't drink soda, we drink pop. Or a two-fer. We still drink 26ers, though since metric it should be 750ers.
We wear tuques. We eat back bacon, not Canadian bacon. We already know it's Canadian.
We deke out of meetings. We turn on the tap, not the faucet. Our capital is Oddawa, whose hockey team did dick against the Ducks.
We hosers will survive, despite the rising flood of American media. Despite Sesame Street, "brought to you by the letter Zee."
Archaic dialect
But I will miss Zed. It is amusing to use it on Americans. At spelling bees, for instance. Throws them right off.
How they came to Zee is a bit blurry. Zee is an archaic British dialect form that somehow migrated only to America.
Noah Webster made it official when he put Zee in his dictionary in 1828.
If nothing else, this allowed their Alphabet Song to rhyme.
... u-v-w, x-y-z
Now I know my ABCs,
Next time won't you sing with me?
I guess it is too late to change that to:
Now I have it in my head
We Canucks are so well-read.
As for those damn beavers (Frank and Gordon here, Jules and Bertrand in Quebec), Bell spokesman Paolo Pasquini tells me the Zee is part of what draws eyes to the billboard.
"It's meant to stick in people's heads."
So, I guess you've been flooded by patriotic outrage, eh?
"I've seen just one complaint," says Pasquini.
Okay, I give up. The Americans have even overrun our alphabet. I'm going home to catch some Zees.
Mike Strobel's column runs daily, Wednesday to Saturday.
-
Well, this topic is over my zed.
Now, I stick with zees, light as a breeze; they float freely out the window, through the trees.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Just a typo. It was supposed to say, “The calls are Fred.”
You’re a poet and didn’t know it.
Very good!
Come and listen to a story ‘boot the letter Zed,
That’s what it’s called, so Canadians have said.
And then one day, there’s a beaver on TV,
Telling their kids to pronounce it as a ‘zee’.
Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.
One of the "Beavers" we're talking about
... suffice to say, not my idea of the good time variety of same.
Ward, I think you need to talk to the Beaver...
ROFL
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