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.
Grey is still a colour, though Canadian newspapers only recently revived the "u."It's time to reassert the simple truth that Modern American English is closer to the English of 1600 than Modern British English. Yes, Noah Webster dropped the "u" - but he did so because it was a recently-added affectation, adopted because 18th century Brits had decided it was stylish to pretend to be French.
They even use different fingers to pick their noses in Canada! Ask a border guard so you don't get it wrong.
And you have to take language classes to get the accent right, or you'll be deported. Just being neurotically precise in pronunciation just isn't enough anymore!
Oods bodkins! Ye means ter saye they Kerrified the language?
Mark
So, was “ZZ Top” called “Zed Zed Top” all of these past years?
The English long spoken in Apalachia and preserved in folk ballads was closer to early English than the English spoken in London.
Now, of course, most people speak TV-speak.
No doubt. In my opinion (this time you CAN count it as humble) Canadians are the best players.
But there IS one European dear to Ducks’ fans hearts — Teemu Selanne.
...
The surveys show people under 30 use Zee.
Don't worry, it's just that the under-30's realize that Canada's "not even a real country anyway." ;-)
oh, crumbs...now that stupid ditty is going to be going through my head all day...”Cooo-rookookoo, coorookookoo...”
That's because Webster went out of his way to differentiate American English from British English.
It’s ‘Z’ as in ‘Zee’, and only the brain dead say ‘Zed’.
Ah, the Stanley Cup trophy; created when Red Green decided to convert an old milk can into a spittoon....
Actually, it wasn’t a milk can. The whole thing is duct tape.
Uhh...what? Am I the only one who has no clue what this topic’s about? Lol
I know Canadians say “zed” and not “zee” like Americans, but this is one of the more confusing topics I’ve seen on FR.
Puny humans!
Alfredsson and Volchenkov vs. Selanne...I don’t think that’s a huge difference in European players. Maybe the Ducks are just better ;) (And it was Alfie who GOT them to the SC finals in the first place and scored most of the goals...he’s actually better than a lot of the Canadians on the team.)
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