The German Z makes a different sound than in English. In German, Z is pronounced like the English “TS” sound in the middle of the word “pizza.” You can also think of the ending sound in the word “cats” or “hats.”
The German consonant 'z' is pronounced in the same manner as the English 'ts' sound that is found at the end of words such as 'cats', 'lots' or 'sits'.
The zed pronunciation is older, and it more closely resembles the Greek letter, zeta, from which the English letter is derived. And zed is closer to other languages' spelling and pronunciation of the letter; for instance, the French say zède, German speakers say zet, and Spanish speakers say zeta.
z: The letter z represents the sound /t͡s/. The sound, a product of the High German consonant shift, has been written with z since Old High German in the 8th century.
Replace “th” with “s” or “z”: The “th” sound (as in “the”) is difficult for native German speakers to pronounce, since it doesn't exist in their language. Because of this, the “th” sound is often replaced with an “s” or “z” sound. Instead of saying, “Thank you for this thing,” you might say, “Zank you for zis sing.”
In English, the letter "y" is very common and the letter "z" is relatively rare, whereas in German the letter "z" is very common and the letter "y" is very uncommon. The German layout places "z" in a position where it can be struck by the index finger, rather than by the weaker little finger.
Zee became the standard way to pronounce Z in the United States in the 19th century. It's said that zee most likely came about because it rhymes with other letter pronunciations in the English alphabet (e.g., e, d, c, b, g, and p).
Zed is the name of the letter Z. The pronunciation zed is more commonly used in Canadian English than zee. English speakers in other Commonwealth countries also prefer the pronunciation zed.
Much of our modern alphabet comes directly from the Greek alphabet, including a letter, that looked just like our “Z,” that the Greeks called “zeta.” “Zeta” evolved into the French “zede,” which in turn gave us “zed” as English was shaped by Romance languages like French.
Zee, on the other hand, first appeared in print in a British language textbook—Thomas Lye's New Spelling-book—in 1677. The name zee itself is thought to have originated as nothing more than a dialect variation of zed, probably influenced by the regular bee, cee, dee, ee pattern of much of the rest of the alphabet.
J in German is pronounced as “yott” (rhyming with “thought”). The German J is pronounced as an English Y. This can be observed in words like ja, Jammer, and Jahr. Q in German shares a similarity with English: it is always paired with a U.
In most English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom, the letter's name is zed /zɛd/, reflecting its derivation from the Greek letter zeta (this dates to Latin, which borrowed Y and Z from Greek), but in American English its name is zee /ziː/, ...
As you probably know, the Greeks called it zeta, a name the Romans borrowed when they stole the letter and tacked it onto the end of their own alphabet. Most European languages call it some form of “zeta”: zäta, zet, Zett, zede, or, as in most varieties of English, zed.
These days Z is the most rarely used letter in the alphabet; however, American English uses it more often than British English. Early English—it should be noted—did not have a Z but used S for both voiced and unvoiced sibilants.
In fact, most English speakers outside the US use “zed” — including people in the UK, Ireland, India, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
It's not just the British that pronounce “z” as “zed”. The vast majority of the English speaking world does this. The primary exception, of course, is in the United States where “z” is pronounced “zee”. The British and others pronounce “z”, “zed”, owing to the origin of the letter “z”, the Greek letter “Zeta”.
Most of the English-speakers in the world, including most Canadians, CALL the letter Z “zed”. Americans CALL it “zee”. It is usually PRONOUNCED /z/ (IPA).
The word 'zebra' has two correct pronunciations - 'Ze-bra' and 'Zee-bra'; just like the letter 'Z' can be pronounced as either 'Zed' or 'Zee'.
Mom and Mommy are old-English words, words that are stilled used in Birmingham and most parts of the West Midlands. It is said that when people from the West Midlands went to America many years ago they took the spelling with them, hence Americans use Mom and Mommy.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) officially adopted aluminum in 1925, but in 1990 The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) accepted aluminium as the international standard. And so we land today: with aluminum used by the English speakers of North America, and aluminium used everywhere else.
The German language normally uses ⟨f⟩ to indicate the sound /f/ (as used in the English word fight) and ⟨w⟩ to indicate the sound /v/ (as in victory). However, ⟨v⟩ does occur in a large number of German words, where its pronunciation is /f/ in some words but /v/ in others.
What is an umlaut? An umlaut is often thought of as the two dots over letters, usually vowels, in the German language. The word umlaut actually doesn't only mean the marks themselves however. It can also refer to the process where a vowel sound shifted in the past.
The problem is: both sounds, the English W and V do not exist in German. A German W is neither an English W or V, but something in between. The German V is either pronounced as F or German W. (There is no special sound for V in German). So for a German an English V is closest to a German W in sound, hence the mix up.