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.