Okay, for context I am a Canadian high school student who while on summer break took a job to tutor a boy who just finished Grade 4 and due to Covid happening when he was in very early grades he is behind on both reading/writing and math.
Now, as a Canadian it’s a right of passage to make fun of Americans and in early elementary school one of my teachers brought up the fact that Americans pronounce the letter “z” as “zee” instead of “zed” which is more common in Canada. She told us jokingly that maybe the reason that Americans pronounced it as “zee” was to have it rhyme with “v” in the alphabet song and since then me and my friends have joked about pronouncing “v” as “ved” to make it rhyme with “zed” in the alphabet song.
Now at first I only used this when I was talking with my friends and when spelling words out to them I would say “ved” instead of “vee”. But it’s been many years since we started doing it and now it’s stuck. Whenever I need to remember how to spell a word, or my computer password which has a “v” in it, or when singing the alphabet song in my head to remember the order of letters to search through a dictionary or whatever, I’ll always say “v” as “ved”
Anyway, all that brought us to my tutoring job where I have to walk through reading with a kid and unfortunately anytime I mention the letter “v” (which happens more frequently that you would think) I accidentally say “Ved” this has happened multiple times and every time the boy looks at me like I have 2 heads and I have to apologize and correct myself. To make it even worse the kid’s mom sits in from the room beside the one me and the kid are in and she definitely hears me struggle to say “v” properly. I have to really pay 100% attention to the letter in order to say it properly because right now “Ved” sounds more natural and correct and “Vee” just sounds wrong.
TLDR: I keep pronouncing the letter “v” as “Ved” to a boy I’m tutoring because of an inside joke with my friends made to dunk on Americans.
Comments
As a Canadian I never understood the Zed thing, is it just a holdover from The British?
What about bed, ced, ded, ed, ged, ped, and ted?
[deleted]
Ved’s dead, baby. Ved’s dead.
“Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.”
Well now I’m going to start saying Ved.
lol some things need to be different anyway! A YouTuber I watch was tacking about the Chevy 3WT and did not wanna constantly pronounce 3 DoubleU T so he decided that W should be pronounced Wee so throughout the video he talked about the 3 Wee T
I fully agree with W being pronounced Wee
Did you at least apologize as it is in your Canadian nature.
I like to refer to New Zealand as New Zedland, if I ever meet somebody from there I’ll probably embarrass myself
In the past I have heard Americans justify that Z is Zee because it rhymes in the alphabet song. That is not surprising because The Alphabet Song was written by an American from Boston.
This is mildly hilarious lmao thanks for telling us
It’s bizarre that you think having one letter that sounds nothing like the others, doesn’t rhyme, doesn’t fit and ruins the end of the song is obviously the correct and sensible way. To the point where ypu feel a need to make fun of people for disagreeing.
Generally it’s the other way round. People who insist that something should be oddly mismatched for no logical reason are the ones who get poked fun at.
The US is dumpster fire and making fun of Americans is an international sport, but out of all the shit we have fucked up beyond repair, I feel that Zee is one thing we managed to get right. Fuck knows we’ve got nothing else to be proud of right now.