I’m all for inclusion of all people in our society. No one should be prejudiced for who they are.

BUT! Today I have to draw the line! Listening to the Play School alphabet song with my kid and it goes “A, B, C, D…X, Y, zed or zee”. Since when is this blatant destruction of our national identity accepted?

I’ll be picketing outside the ABC’s head office from tomorrow and following that the education office until this travesty can be corrected! Who’s with me?!

  • BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    18·
    7 days ago

    It’s fine. Outside of visiting the United States I never hear anyone say zee. Even the American guys at work say zed.

    We explained to our 4 year old, when she was 2, why she might hear zee on tv. She gets it and goes “it’s zed!” when she hears those shows. This is a nothing problem.

  • Drusenija@aussie.zoneEnglish
    7·
    7 days ago

    I always knew it as zee growing up. It worked in the rhyme.

    “W, X, Y and Zee, now I know my A B Cs, next time won’t you sing with me” (that last line is probably a separate argument on its own 😂).

    Then Dragon Ball Z hit Australian TV and it was done after that.

  • Fleur_@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    5 days ago

    Idk which it’s meant to be and I’m too afraid to ask

    I feel like no matter how I say it some cunt always tells me I’m saying it wrong

  • averyminya@beehaw.orgEnglish
    6·
    7 days ago

    Wait until you hear what they did to the U.S. alphabet.

    LMNOP is gone. They fucking killed it.

    • ikt@aussie.zoneEnglish
      164·
      7 days ago

      No /s, it is, no one says Gen Zed, or Jay Zed, XY Zee is just next in line, it’s all Zee’s and it makes sense why

      At this point nobody is learning ‘English’, people are learning American because they watch American Movies, TV Shows, listen to American Music, eat American Food, play American Video Games, we watch literally millions of American Youtube and Tiktok Videos every day, we’re following American Influencers and Celebrities, with American Social Media Australians are following American Politics more closely than Australian Politics and frequently confusing the two, in addition we’re all addicted to the American Apps installed on American Operating Systems (all of them, Windows and MacOS and Android and IOS) on the American Smart Phones/Laptops/Desktops

      The top most visited websites in Australia:

      https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites/australia/

      1. American
      2. American
      3. American
      4. American
      5. American

      The consequence of this is that we lose our culture, but as some French statesman said: why bother when everyone is enjoying everything?

      • the_crotch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        7 days ago

        Well tbf what you’re losing is the UK’s culture. Finding a balance of other stuff that works for you instead of clinging to tradition is how you build a culture of your own.

      • teft@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        7 days ago

        I’ve heard people say Jay Zed. I’ve also heard Zed Zed Top.

        Language is weird.

  • MuffinHeeler@aussie.zoneEnglish
    151·
    7 days ago

    The Wiggles alphabet song says this too. Although that I get since they export to the states now. It might even introduce American kids to the Zed.

    Playschool is unforgivable. That’s our national kids show and should be Australian.

  • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
    14·
    7 days ago

    Zee, candy, cookies. All that American language creeping in shits me.

    And yet we also see “football” being used more and more often to refer to soccer. The one time Australian culture and American culture should be in sync, some of us decided to copy the bloody poms.

    • shirro@aussie.zoneEnglish
      5·
      7 days ago

      As long as they don’t call it footy its fine. Football is a broad term for a lot of codes.

    • gazter@aussie.zoneEnglish
      102·
      7 days ago

      I’m not sure if I understand which version you’d prefer- Do you want football to refer to the game where players use their hands to move an egg shaped object, or do you think football should refer to the game where players use their feet to move a ball shaped object?

      • Aussieiuszko@aussie.zoneEnglish
        7·
        7 days ago

        We’re not America.

        Here we say football to refer to the game where players use their feet to move an egg shaped object.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
        35·
        7 days ago

        Tell me you have no understanding of the history of football sports without…

        Also that you don’t know what the word “ball” means.

        • gazter@aussie.zoneEnglish
          4·
          7 days ago

          I apologise for my attempt at a light-hearted joke, I didn’t mean to cause offence. Although I was, and remain, legitimately confused as to which camp you are in.

          I’ll willingly admit I have minimal knowledge about football sports, but I always thought that broadly speaking American football was inspired by rugby, which essentially evolved from people cheating at soccer at a place called Rugby- I remember reading the little blue plaque there.

          As for a ball, sure, if you’re about slang and the elasticity of the English language, a ball can be any shape really. But, pushes up glasses acksually, the word ball means a sphere.

          • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
            21·
            7 days ago

            Oh very well done, you found the one dictionary that limits the definition of ball to spherical objects. That, unfortunately, makes that dictionary wrong, because a dictionary’s job is to describe language as it is used, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in good faith who does not call the ball used in Australian football, American football, or the two rugby codes, a ball. Oxford does a much better job:

            a solid or hollow spherical or egg-shaped object that is kicked, thrown, or hit in a game.

            And so does (unsurprisingly, since it has the tendency to be the most complete source for a lot of words) Wiktionary:

            An object that is the focus of many sports and games, in which it may be thrown, caught, kicked, bounced, rolled, chased, retrieved, hit with an instrument, spun, etc., usually roughly spherical or ovoid but whose size, weight, bounciness, colour, etc. differ according to the game

            The history is actually interesting. The story you told is one I’ve heard before and at one point believed myself (though I’ve never heard someone take the inflammatory tone of calling it “cheating”, so much as it usually being described as him being so wrapped up in the heat of the moment). But it’s not quite right.

            The truth is that prior to the mid 19th century many different forms of “football” were played across England, and whenever teams from two different areas wanted to play each other they would have to agree on a set of rules. It may have been sort of like how International Rules Football today is a compromise ruleset between Australian and Gaelic football. Then in the early to mid 19th century specific codes started to coalesce and become more standardised. Rugby has its first written standard ruleset in 1845, and what we know today as soccer followed shortly after in 1863 with the formation of the Football Association (from which soccer takes its name).

            For a time between the formation of the FA and its first finalised Laws of the Game, rugby clubs remained members, but following a decision to remove the draft rules that would allow carrying the ball after “he makes a fair catch, or catches the ball on the first bound”, rugby and soccer went their separate ways and eventually evolved into the sports we know today. (Incidentally, while I knew the information from the previous paragraph already, apart from specific dates, this whole paragraph was entirely new to me in looking up those dates just now.)

            The use of the term “football” for all these sports, incidentally, comes from the fact that they are propelled forward on foot, rather than on horseback as in polo, or with a racket as in tennis. The origins of football sports are so intermixed it is impossible to say that one inherently has a better claim than any other. I would certainly not claim an Englishman is wrong for calling it football. But in this country, it has always been soccer, because we have our own local football codes.

    • egrets@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      7 days ago

      Why stop there? Time to campaign for fee, hee, jee, kee, etc.

      L, M, N and O get a free pass because they’re really just a prefix to P, not letters in their own right.