A bit OT but American English is becoming very popular over here in the UK. It's very common to see z instead of s in words for example. I wouldn't be surprised to see the u dropped at all.
I grew up here in the US saying "zee". It's only now, in my wiser years, that I'm realizing the obvious: with "bee", "cee", and "dee" (amongst others) all sounding similar-ish already that we really ought to embrace "zed" for clarity.
Why add another consonant to the name of a consonant? Literally the only letter that's like that.
Americans and the British (and a couple billion other people) share a language that is spelled like shit. We should steal simplifications from each other as much as possible.
It's because the English alphabet is not a phonetic lettering system. If I were American I'd:
a) start saying "t" in the middle of a word as a "t" instead of a "d", and
b) vastly improve the standard of my spelling and those around me
before telling anyone, especially British people, that words shouldn't be spelt "like shit".
Personally, I'm with the Arguments against reform section of Wikipedia[1]:
> English is a West Germanic language that has borrowed many words from non-Germanic languages, and the spelling of a word often reflects its origin. This sometimes gives a clue as to the meaning of the word. Even if their pronunciation has strayed from the original pronunciation, the spelling is a record of the phoneme.
Which is how I can usually guess the correct pronunciation and meaning of an unfamiliar word while I see highly educated Americans butcher the pronunciation of anything outside the common vernacular. These "simplifications" are doing anything but.
However:
> Another criticism is that a reform may favor one dialect or pronunciation over others, creating a standard language
If I could force North Americans to speak better then I might be persuaded.
> a) start saying "t" in the middle of a word as a "t" instead of a "d"
Americans do not have a distinction between intervocalic /t/ and intervocalic /d/. (Though you have to be careful - that analysis requires you to commit to a "syllabic /n/" model of words like "kitten".)
But while /t/ and /d/ are pronounced identically in that context, you can't say that /t/ is being pronounced "as /d/". They are both flapped, which is a sound just as distinct from [d] as it is from [t].
I'm an American, but I use "zed" over "zee" in some contexts (such as ham radio) because "zee" is too easily confusable with the other letters it rhymes with: bee, see, dee, gee, pee, tee. It's definitely an advantage. And you don't have to drop into NATO phonetic with its multiple syllables per letter.
More people in the world say “zee” than “zed”. I’m surprised to hear a British person wants to sound like they’re French. (I’m just kidding as I hope you are about beating children)
Whatever the internet tells you about what is "standard"... as someone who has spent his life in New Zealand, I can assure you the majority of under-30s usually use "zee". "Zed" is on its way out.
It probably started with the popularity things like Sesame Street and Dragon Ball Z (Dragon Ball Zee).
However, interestingly, the one time everyone uses "zed" is when we acronymise the country name -- NZ, or N-Zed.
You've given a figure that is around a third of the entire population of the United States, so I think I'm on safe ground, even taking into account the Indian government's well known inability at accurate record taking, but thanks for the list, Pakistan has "187,758,480" under English speakers. No chance of them saying "zee".
Thanks to India, more people in the world say "w" like "v" but I feel safe knowing that Indians have a better accent and better spelling than anyone in North America, and I would never joke about anything this serious.
> Maybe adapting to internationalized (American at this point) English.
I suggest that in the highly unlikely event this is true that we (the rest of the properly educated British) hunt this person down and dispose of them. After imposing a number of spelling tests first, of course.
As an expat Brit who has been living with ESL speakers for over a decade and gotten sloppy on many of these things, some part of me lives in constant fear of exactly this eventuality.
Tamade doesn’t sound in anyway like a Chinese username (maybe Japanese phonetically, but that could easily be a coincidence), but I would let them speak for themselves.
> Tamade doesn’t sound in anyway like a Chinese username
Context is pretty much everything; the only Chinese username I can more or less reel off from memory is '基妮真特么老油条... sabibibi', and I may be forgetting parts of it, but certainly there's plenty of swearing.
Why wouldn't you leave those things on? Apple designed iOS for those things to be handled and turned on when needed. BLE is quite low in power, GPS is only on when location services need it. These are concerns I would have had about 10-15 years ago, but I don't now.
I listen to the Friday Night Comedy Radio 4 podcast every Friday. There was an announcement on there that Apple Podcasts would still get them, but 30 days later than BBC Sounds.
I must say, I remember when the BBC were moving to HTML5 video players on their website and they were happy they weren't locked into RealPlayer anymore and how over the years, the BBC has always provided all its services as platform agnostic as possible.
I'm quite angry the BBC has pushed its podcasts to its own platform. The whole point of the BBC operating the way it does is to remain open and not have these weird closed platform scenarios. I also don't really like the BBC Sounds app.
Yeah, landscape. It was translated to my language (russian) as “album orientation” long ago in winword and I make this mistake from time to time. Portrait sounds like “book-ish orientation” btw. I believe that’s because books are usually portrait-like and albums tend to have wider pages. https://www.google.ru/search?q=%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%B1%D0%B...
That's an odd thing to say about a company so well known for its privacy stance the FBI tried to shame Apple to get backdoors put in after the San Bernardino massacre and they said no.
