Do people in the UK call the old bearded rock band "Zed Zed Top"?
Or the rap artist "Jay-Zed"?
Or the rap artist "Jay-Zed"?
We always say "Zee Zee Top" - I think there's a sort of unspoken acceptance that they've earnt it. But you sometimes hear people say "Jay-Zed", normally as a bit of gentle mockery.
Ah, so I'm guessing it wasn't "Dragon Ball Zed" either, then.
I guess that makes sense, the Rush song doesn't become YYZee in the US (mostly).
It is in french. In the intro song it sounds like they sing "dragon boule zedde".
Boule (kind of ) being pronounced as "bool" ( from boolean )
Am in Australia, we use 'zed' for the letter 'z'. but it's different for the band, as that's a proper name. You go with the pronunciation of the owner of the name.
My buddy once showed me a funny interaction in the comments under a Top Gear video about the Corvette Z06. Being from the UK, the called it the Zed-06. But someone in the comments claimed that it should be pronounced Zee-06. The conversation went something like this:
"Why does he keep saying Zed-06? It's Zee-06."
"Because in England, where this video was made, we say 'zed'"
"Well, in America, where the car was made, we say 'zee'"
"Well, in England, where English was made, we say, 'zed'"
Yes indeed, but I guess that's because a model designation doesn't feel the same as a proper noun - it's just numbers and letters. Maybe..?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well yeah if I saw a BMW 3 series I wouldn't use the German pronunciation for 3. Why use the American pronunciation of Z?
The difference to me is that a model number is primarily written, not spoken, information, while "Z Z Top" is meant to be spoken before written
I may be just making fun of those vehicles but I call them a 24 oz or the newer ones are a 35 oz.
Exactly this. Unless I am intentionally being an arse by refusing to read American products which rely on the Z being read as "zee" to work in the intended pronunciation. It's the little things that make life worth living, y'know.
It's the same with English speaking countries and Rammstein. We say Stein with a normal sss sound but when it's the name of the band it goes to the German shhh sound.
I come from a "zed" country but we normally use the pronunciation of the people/creators.
So if I were reading the name "Jay-Z" for the first time and had never heard of him, I would think it was pronounced Jay-Zed or maybe Jays, but when I heard his name said by others I mentally adjusted it to Jay Zee.
I do the same thing in reverse, I live in Zee territory but I always pronounced the ZX Spectrum as Zed-Ex
Imagine if the whole alphabet was like zed instead of like zee:
a bed ced ded ed f ged h i j k l m n o ped q r s ted u ved w x y zed
I had ties to both Zee and Zed-speakers growing up, but in my experience, Zee and Zed can be used somewhat interchangeably, even across the pond. This might be in order to account for names (like Z Z Top and Jay Z), puns (such as La-Z for lazy) or even ease of pronounciation - when playing CSGO, I've heard Americans refer to the CZ-75 as Cee-Zed-Seventy-Five, because they found it weird to switch between the cee, zee and seven sounds, but I'm not sure how common this is.
As a Canadian it really depends whether I say Zee or Zed. Looking online I was surprised to see that it has apparently been Zed in Canada for a long time, but I distinctly recall being raised on Zee until about the mid 2000s then everywhere in the curriculum it was Zed and I started hearing it more. Probably the biggest influence on whether I say Zee or Zed just depends on pop norms, and what sounds better.
Some examples:
At least the British and Americans are consistent, I don't even know what the heck I'm doing here!
Day-Zee (the movie and video game)
This one is kind of fascinating to me, because even being from the US, I feel like Zed works better when it's zombie-related. Probably both due to Shaun of the Dead ("Not using the Zed word!"), and because that makes it rhyme with "dead".
There is a difference between Zeh bra and Zee bra, I say it to rhyme with meh bruh. Maybe that's why they don't seem very impressive animals.
Here in Australia where we also pronounced z as zed not zee, I've never heard anyone say zed zed top and it's always zee zee top. However, while I personally would too rarely find myself on a conversation about Jay-Z to be able to gather enough data to form a conclusion, I vaguely feel like I've people both say Jay-Zed and also Jay-Zee though I'm not quite sure.
I think the thing is, without being able to explain why, Zed Zed top just seems too obviously not the intended pronunciation that it's just a no brainer to interpret it as Zee knowing that they're American and American culture being so ubiquitous that everybody knows you guys say Zee. Jay Z theoretically should fall under the same rule but I think it's easy enough to say Jay Zed without it feeling weird and wrong that same people might opt for their familiar Z pronunciation over the source Z pronunciation, though I'd say it's not typical.
I think the rest of the world is more fluent in American than that.
Years of cultural imports.
Yeah, we know you call that a sidewalk and not a pavement. Yeah, we know that's a faucet and not a tap.
Everyone speaks American thanks to endless Friends reruns, Cheers growing up and the focus of 99% of Hollywood.
No that it's a bad thing though. Commonality is good. What's weird is Americans seem constantly unaware and surprised by this fact.
As for Jay-Zed, that sounds like something Mark and Lard would have said, repeatedly for comic effect. If you don't know who they are, maybe it's time to learn a slightly different language yourself?
No. Its still Zee Zee top and Jay Zee because it's the names they use themselves. For most other things, zed is used instead.
If it’s a company name or a band or something then I’ll say zee. But acronyms like ZFS are always zed.
Day-zee. Definitely not daisies, maybe similar to daisy but there's a pause and different emphasis while saying it
i always do, but it's mostly to be facetious - i wouldn't be hugely surprised if people didn't know what i was talking about