Talk:Zed

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Commonwealth English use[edit]

It is a simple fact that the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced "zed" in many English-speaking countries. Removing this information from Wikipedia serves no purpose. I won't revert any further removals today or I'll be in violation of WP:3RR, but this silliness really needs to stop. --stephenw32768^<talk> 23:39, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(Zeta)[edit]

The argument for "Zed" based on "Zeta" is baseless, else "B" would also be pronounced "Bed", coming from "Beta" as it does. Why does this one letter (Z) stand out as being wholly unique in pronunciation from the rest of the alphabet? The only other one like it is Q, which I guess could be pronounced "Quee!" but that sounds silly. --Buddy13 (talk) 20:59, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All constructively intended comments are welcome, including the preceding one which qualifies by intent, in spite of its far-from-helpful naivete. Zeta (letter) and beta (letter) have been around evolving, about 2¹/₂ millennia, probably significantly longer if you count what i presume to be their roots in Phoenician. (Alpha BTW comes from a pictograph of an ox-head representing a kh-like consonant sound that stood for first phoneme of the Phoenician word for ox (the Greeks turned the horns to the bottom, but never mind), whose second phoneme was a vowel whose sound is among those we would assign to A. (The Phoenicians, and the Hebrews who followed their lead, didn't bother with representing the vowels; ancient Greek, tho, gave vowel-sound differences more role in distinguishing words than the Semitic languages, and in effect demanded the invention of letters for vowels, in order to avoid ambiguous writing.) Now, Z falls at the end of our alphabet, (and Zeta IIRC also falls late in the Greek alphabet), which is likely to reflect lower use and thus slower evolution of the names. So it is far from surprising that Zeta has changed less than Beta. BTW B (and P) are also labio-dental or lip-and-tongue sounds, while S and Z are linguals; i sense that my enunciation of Z (voiced) for some reason requires a lot more tension in my lips than S (unvoiced), when compared to the difference i experience in pronouncing B (voiced) and P (unvoiced). That may help explain the differences in both position in the respective alphabets and in the malleability of the names.

--Jerzy•t 09:58, 1 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(Humor with apology)[edit]

Sorry for OT, couldn't resist:

Butch, whose motorcycle is this?

It's a chopper.

Whose chopper is this?

Zed's.

Who's Zed?

Zed's dead, baby, Zed's dead.

— Emil J. 14:15, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(OT be Occupational Therapy, but also WP:Off-Topic. "Are you good?")
--Jerzy•t 09:58, 1 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(Space conservation)[edit]

There is absolutely no point to this page other than to waste space. It can grouped under the page Z and pronunciation can be a section. Whiteka6 (talk) 04:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Space is cheap. And BTW user time is expensive to users. Most users interested in Z, however they pronounce it, don't care about Zed. But perhaps Zee (letter) should be a Rdr to Z.
--Jerzy•t 09:58, 1 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]