the letter z

The last letter of the alphabet is the bane of my existence, especially when it comes to Scrabulous/ Wordscraper. I don’t know that many words with ‘z’ in them, and the ones that I do require too many vowels that I do not have. Last I checked, they don’t recognise lolspeak.

Then there’s the pronunciation. I was in my very late teens when I learned that the Americans pronounce it differently from us (us meaning those who grew up saying lorries instead of trucks, autumn instead of fall, rubber instead of eraser, petrol instead of gas, holiday instead of vacation… you get the idea).

What we call ‘zed’, they call ‘zee’. Though I suppose we don’t really call it ‘zed’, but ‘zack’. But ‘zack’ is not too far away from ‘zed’, whereas ‘zee’ is akin to a different planet altogether. I may have immersed myself in some American culture, but ‘zee’ is something that I cannot bring myself to say. Memories of my Standard Six English teacher haunt me till this day.

Unless it’s a brand, e.g. TMZ. Then I have no problem with that.

Most of you would also realise that those educated in Chinese schools pronounce it as something else too. In words, ‘zoo’ becomes ‘joo’, ‘zero’ becomes ‘jilo’ and sometimes ‘New Zealand’ becomes ‘New Jeeland’.

I am not taking the piss. Since I didn’t really pay attention in my Mandarin classes, I wonder if there’s something in the phonetics/ language that hinders the Chinese educated peps from pronouncing it as ‘zack’ or ‘zed’. I know that KY spent his primary and secondary school years in a Chinese school, but this mispronunciation doesn’t apply to him.

Well, if you have any insight, I’d love to know.

comments

Comments

  1. Not all Chinese educated pupils get the J/Z or R/L thing wrong though. The problem starts way earlier than school, if the differences between J/Z or R/L is not established at a very young age, you can’t just learn it when you grow up, it is pretty much hard wired. IIRC only 2% of the population would be able to overcome that.

    for more info read the language instinct by steven pinker

  2. this sound like an episode of sesame street…

  3. in this cyber age… not much peep are getting the word rite.. even reinvented some words already.. :p.. that made it even worst for getting the pronunciation rite.. lolz..

  4. what about zewt?

  5. I was told that the reason the Chinese-educated folks say “jeero” instead of “zero” is becos of the Chinese phonetics. That there is no “zeeeee” sound in the Chinese library of sounds. Not sure how true that is tho, being a banana myself πŸ˜€

  6. KY: you have ze book?

    ront: or Ò€œyou say potatoe, i say potatoÒ€

    theidiotdriver: hahz you iz ritez

    zewt: j00t?

    Eleen: heh i thought so too. ‘zh’ = zhang, zhuo zhao, tse etc. also, i noticed it happens with ‘su’ , e.g. shuperman

  7. i say ubi kentang lah…by the way, here’s z sound in hanyu pinyin. ? is ‘zi’

  8. ront : Imho, i believe the chinese word ‘zi’ is different from ‘zee’. The former does not require one to position our tongues, show off our teeth and make the buzzing ‘zzzzzzz’ sound.

    But then again, who am I to know all that lah. A few Mandarin classes on Saturdays when I was a kid is barely sufficient to teach me how to write my name in Chinese. Altho I did fly through those Mandarin classes in Uni years later. πŸ™‚

  9. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz………..

  10. “Memories of my Standard Six English teacher haunt me till this day.”

    OMG :O Are you talking about Miss Ng? She is the ONE teacher who gave me/us The Most Homework Ever.

  11. yup …all the way from chim pan A …to …chim pan Z πŸ™‚

  12. In mandarin, the pronunciation of J and Z are different, R and L are different, T and D are different. So it also puzzle me why some mandarin speaking people still can’t get it right.

    Maybe due to locality of different slang πŸ™‚

  13. Yesterdays Comment Today.
    Lets hope it works this time. πŸ™‚

    Zho, Zoo, Zero, Zebra, Zilch, Zap, Zig, Zag, Zipper, Zone, Ozone, Zo, Enzyme, zygote, enzymic, aztec, zetetic (I was once in a band called the Zetetic Zebra’s), zenith, azure, azimuth, azalea, haze, laze, maze, daze, craze, graze, jazz, quartz, quiz, pazazz (or is it pizazz?), pizza, dizzy, fizzy, viz, fez, fuzz, buzz, snooze, booze, doze, froze, frozen, freezing, freeze, breeze, zalophus, ziggurette (Hope that’s spelt right … those big mounds in Babylon), zither, zepher (a type of wind … maybe it’s spelt zeffer.) I think I’m out without getting into Pronouns (aka Names) and Americanizations of words, or words such as Realize etc which I’ll leave for you to add all the ize endings too.

  14. ront: o forgot about that but it’s like, zhi. not a clean sharp zi

    eleen: heh my chinese name is the only characters i can write well in chinese πŸ˜€

    eyeris: zoink

    sharon N: hahha yes! she was very strict.

    jeff: heh

    moo_t: possibly. no one really knows eh heh

    dabs: heahe i can’t come up with that many words during a scrabble game

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