You might already know that how long you can stand on one leg has been linked to your brain age ― the position involves coordinating different parts of your body and mind, making it uniquely useful as a marker of ageing.
But not all the signs are medical, as anyone who’s ever looked at a festival lineup and thought “I don’t recognise a single name here” knows.
And recently, members of r/AskUK wondered whether or not the pronunciation of the letter “z” counts as one such marker.
“I was horrified to learn that a fully British colleague of mine says ‘zee’ for the letter zed and he says he always has. Is this now common and I have just lost touch?”, a now-deleted poster asked.
So, we spoke to clinical linguist and CEO of Dysolve, Dr Coral Hoh, about what was really going on.
Yep, it does seem to be an age thing
“Yes, it’s generational but not confined to the UK alone,” the linguist said of the Americanised pronunciation.
“It is also the case in other English-speaking regions,” she told HuffPost UK.
“For example, in Southeast Asia, in countries like Singapore and Malaysia, speakers in their 30s-40s may use ‘zee’ and ‘zed’ interchangeably.”
Meanwhile, she says, “their younger counterparts prefer the former, thanks to American influence.”
Indeed New Zealand magazine North And South have written about increased Americanisms among their younger people.
Growing up in Ireland, people in my Disney Channel-reared age group were constantly being accused of the same thing (I’ll admit I choose “zee” over “zed,” though my older relatives would never).
People think the trend is coming from media, including social media
“Americanisms are becoming more and more common, I blame YouTube,” Redditor u/Frst-Lengthiness-16 opined.
“My kids refuse to call biscuits by the correct name, calling them fucking ‘cookies.’”
Jane Setter, a professor of phonetics at the University of Reading, agrees, telling The Guardian: “For children, it could simply be because everyone is watching a particular trending YouTube influencer or group of influencers, or playing particular online interactive games, through word of mouth and a desire to fit in with their friends, that these people speak in a particular way, and the kids are using the features of those speakers with other kids to show they “belong” to that group.”
This may be part of the reason why Americanisms are so common among Gen Z (never said “Gen Zed,” I note) and younger…
#British #People #Zee #Zed
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