Zed for Zee
Last night's semi-insomniac musing was "When did Zed become Zee?" and the follow-on question of "Was it because Zed doesn't rhyme with "V"?"
However I must be making some progress because instead of feeling compelled to get out of bed and research the answer right then, I was content to lie in bed pondering the question until I drifted off. Which near as I can tell was sometime around 11:30. A good sign.
However this morning the question lingered, so I browsed to my favourite trusted source of trivial information, wikipedia.org, and right off the bat, found the answer in a detailed article covering the history of The Alphabet Song.
In short, I was right. According to wiki, "In the United States, Z is pronounced zee; in most other English-speaking countries it is pronounced zed, which spoils the final rhyme. (This is also the case when it is sung in French, where "y and z" becomes "i-grec, zed".) Generally the absent zee-rhyme is not missed, although some children use a zee pronunciation in the rhyme which they would not use elsewhere. Variants of the song exist to accommodate the zed pronunciation."
The whole article, although listed under the category "Wikipedia articles needing factual verification", is actually quite interesting. I wasn't expecting quite that much information when I initially came up with the question :-)
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