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).
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/, ...
Zee is the American way of saying the letter z. Zed is the British way. Neither is right or wrong, and nobody is ignorant for pronouncing z the way they do. The zed pronunciation is older, and it more closely resembles the Greek letter, zeta, from which the English letter is derived.
The earliest citation for zed dates to 15th-century Middle English: “zed, which is the laste lettre of the a-b-c.” The pronunciation zee is a 17th-century variant of zed. The earliest citation is from a 1677 language textbook, A New Spelling Book by Thomas Lye, a Nonconformist minister and teacher in London, England.
One widely-held theory is that because zed, as the older of the two, was the most widespread variation amongst British English speakers, during the Revolutionary War American English speakers looking to distance themselves from anything even vaguely British simply adopted the zee version as their own to make a stand—no ...
Zed is widely known to be used in British English. But it's also used in almost every English-speaking country. In England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Australia, India, Canada (usually), and New Zealand, Z is pronounced as zed. It's derived from the Greek letter zeta.
zed (plural zeds) (chiefly Commonwealth) The name of the Latin-script letter Z. (in combination) Something Z-shaped. zed-bar. (colloquial, usually in the plural) Sleep.
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.
One key distinction between Australian English and American English in terms of orthography (spelling) is the use of, 's,' as opposed to, 'z.
In a nutshell, it all comes down to the history of English and the way English spelling has changed over time. All of this gradually leads us to the word herb . This word was borrowed into English from Old French, and it didn't have either the letter 'H' or the /h/ sound.
The name “Halloween” comes from “All Hallows Eve,” or the day before All Saints Day, a traditional holy day for Christians. Halloween originated in Europe but during the 19th century immigrants brought it to North America, where it spread in popularity and evolved in many ways.
The UK version is more logical. Math is an abbreviation of mathematics, which is a count noun in British English because there are different types of maths (geometry, algebra, calculus, etc.) and a mass noun that happens to end in an 's' in American English (like gymnastics in both dialects).
The modern English 'mother' comes from the Old English term modor. As such, it is also where many of our informal terms for mothers come from, from 'mommy' and 'mumsy' to 'ma' and 'maw'.
'Hunky-dory' – a neat little piece of British slang that means that a situation is okay, cool, or normal. For example, 'Yeah, everything's hunky-dory at the office. '
Oz is a written abbreviation for ounce. Whisk 1 oz of butter into the sauce. Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
"Eh?" used to solicit agreement or confirmation is also heard regularly amongst speakers in Australia, Trinidad and Tobago and the United Kingdom (where it is sometimes spelled "ay" on the assumption that "eh" would rhyme with "heh" or "meh").