Zed?

Sorry, Simon, I guess it went over my thick Aussie head ... humour can be difficult in writing.

Zee rhymes with "and now I know my ABC's,
a cute poem that teachers use to teach the Alphabet to little kids.

Doesn't everyone know this poem?

Regards, Paul V.

Yes, I know alphabet song, here it goes...

Ah beh tseh dah e fi dji asch,
Ki leh ma nu o peh keh.
Er si ta ut, veh dupliveh,
Ekseh igreka tseta.

You can find MIDI at http://www.kunstderfuge.com/mid/haydn/iscenko/hymn_gott_erhalte_den_kaiser_1797_(c)iscenko.mid

Last word of alphabet doesn't really rhyme with anything to my knowledge.

We could really screw this rhyme up if we reintroduce edh and thorn etc.

We could really screw it up if we also add ash, schwa, eng, esh and ezh ...

"... I thought I knew my ABC,
Don't you try to sing with me."

You the alphabet song would be really messed up if we added even just one extra letter to the alphabet. How about this alphabet

a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z, eth, thorn, ash, schwa, eng, esh, ezh, and ursh. I also threw in ''ursh''. The letter ''ursh'' for the vowel sound in ''burn'', ''fir'', ''turn'', ''heard'', ''learn'' and ''dirt''.

a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z, eth, thorn, ash, schwa, eng, esh, ezh, and ursh. How would it sound to say this alphabet? We'd have to come up with a new alphabet song but there's not that many words that rhyme with ''ursh''.

The English language has more than 40 phonemes but only 26 letters but if we add just one new letter then the alphabet songs won't work anymore.

I meant ''yeah'' not ''you''. ''you'' was a typo.

Jim is right that Zed comes (through French) from the Greek letter Zeta (Zêta). Because so many word spellings have remained intact from the French, their orthography in English appear absurd. That's why the Americans have reformed many of the old British spellings in favour of logic and better consistency.

E.g.

Unchanged commonwealth spellings
----------------------------------
Table->table (and most able endings)
Centre->centre -> center (American)
Litre->Litre -> Liter (American)
Mètre->metre -> meter (American)
théâtre->theatre -> theater (American)

but Lettre->letter (all English speakers)

The American spellings are better in my opinion.

umm, just to throw in a red herring...

being only 20 and having been forced to go through the appauling education system of Australia post 1970s, i learnt the abc song with zee, but when pronouncing Z it was still zed. also some teachers tried to tell us that H "ach" instead of "hach". They also taught us to spell Gaol, Jail.

How come in men in black "Z" is "Zed"? was this dubbed for us or was it like that in the US?

Cathy

Sh sh sh!!!