Thou whoreson Zed, thou unnecessary letter!

I spend a fair bit of time talking to Americans and try not to give it away that I am Made in Canada, however I sometimes sell myself out.  I have to spell out letters occasionally and am always thrown into a panic when 'z' comes up. The dreaded letter "z" as it's come to be. I even went so far as to write it down next to my computer for easy reference. Today, my first instinct when i came across Z was to say ZEE so i (wrongly) assumed it was my Canadian-go-to and picked ZED instead. I was met with confused silence. I threw out a fake cough and started again this time pronouncing it Zee much to my caller's relief.

I decided the way to combat this problem was to do some research, then decided to make it a twofer and blog about it as well. I am always shocked, amazed and pleased at how there is always a website with the exact answer I need. Bill Casselman is like a Canadian-word spokesman or something. He has a page dedicated to the difference between zed and zee, apparently i am not the ONLY person who is concerned with this. He is officially on my list of Awesome Individuals -don't worry one day you might make it there too! (PS, his website is http://www.billcasselman.com/). Here's what he has to say:

Because it entered French from Latin as zeta, it became zède in modern French, zeta in modern Spanish and Italian, and zed in English. The Romans borrowed the letter from the Greeks where it is zeta.

Zed was not uttered affectionately from the lips of every English speaker. Hundreds of years after it entered our alphabet, certain literary types were still bitching about it. “Thou whoreson Zed, thou unnecessary letter!” yells Kent to Oswald during their slanging fight in Act 2 of Shakespeare’s King Lear.

In the first great dictionary of English in 1755 (there were other, lesser word lists printed earlier), Dr. Johnson opined “Z . . . zed, more commonly izzard or uzzard.” The names izzard and uzzard have not totally melted in the obscuring fog of history. Check this 1947 opinion from the Court of Appeals of Kentucky: “If this contract is valid, its provisions are all binding and effective from A to Izzard.” From A to izzard is a folk expression now rare or vanished that implies inclusivity.

In 1828 Noah Webster, the mighty American wielder of word clout, guaranteed that zee would predominate in the United States. In Webster’s magisterial American Dictionary of the English Language he stated: “Z... It is pronounced zee.”

The Concise Oxford Companion states, “The modification of zed ... to zee appears to have been by analogy with bee, dee, vee, etc.” Lye’s New Spelling Book (1677) was the first to list “zee” as a correct pronunciation.

I love that excerpt for a few reasons, first the Shakespeare quote is hilarious- whoreson, what an unusually fantastic thing to yell at a letter! Also, "from A to Izzard" is a great little all inclusive saying that i am going to adopt into my phrase collection. Moving on- so basically, people changed the pronunciation of zee to make it a better rhyming letter and to spite the British. Canadians know that singing the alphabet song is rather embarrassing when we have to sing... Y and Zed, now you know your ABCs next time won't you sing with ME! ME? that doesn't rhyme with Zed. Terrible song! We need to Canadianize it so we don't sound like idiots. Maybe it should be Sing with Fred or Sing in your head or maybe we should scrap the Zed from our alphabet. Not like we use it very often, there's about 3 words i can think of that we would have to come up with a new spelling for. I feel like it'd be a fun project. What should we change Zoo and Zebra to? Foo and Febra? I like. I will send my suggestions to Merriam Webster and get the ball rolling.

I tried to find some amusing pictures of "Z" but the results consisted mainly of Jay-Z and Dragonball-Z and i felt neither with appropriate for this blog, so I'm using a large pink font in lieu.  

Walking while intoxicated can be a high-risk activity

I was doing some research at work and came across this little article. I was vaguely shocked at their statistics. Spoiler alert: December 23 and Jan 1 are the most deadly days for pedestrians. Tomorrow being one of those days I am rather freaked out. Also, we are planning on walking home after the concert at the casino on New Years Eve as it is really close to my condo. I am having second thoughts. Should we perhaps ride our bikes there? Or maybe it's just safer to drink and drive than it is to drink and walk? Either way folks, after having a few drinks make sure you look both ways before crossing the street.

Here's the article from the Vancouver Sun:

For all the warnings not to drink and drive, little is heard about a risky motor activity of another stripe: impaired walking.

Nearly 40 per cent of pedestrians killed on Canadian roads in a recent year had been drinking, with two-thirds of them having a blood-alcohol concentration more than double the legal limit for driving.

Of all the fatally injured pedestrians with booze in their systems, four in five had more alcohol in their blood than allowed for drivers, according to the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators.
Heading into two of the deadliest times of the year for pedestrians -- Dec. 23 and New Year's Day -- experts say there's an urgent need for people to take the dangers of "drinking and walking" seriously.

"You don't think of impaired walking being a big deal, but it definitely is," says Valerie Powell, communications coordinator for the Canada Safety Council.

"A lot of times, at night, people aren't wearing bright clothing and blend in with their surroundings. And when you get an impaired pedestrian, they're not paying attention to the cars around them. That's where the problem comes in."

The CCMTA report, published this year, is based on 2007 data in national databases maintained by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation.

In the U.S., the facts are strikingly similar: according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, 38 per cent of fatally injured pedestrians over the age of 15 had blood-alcohol content at or above the legal limit for drivers, with the percentage rising to 53 per cent for deaths between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.

These numbers, although dramatic, likely underplay the problem of so-called walking while intoxicated since many fatally injured pedestrians aren't tested for alcohol.

In Canada, for example, of the 426 pedestrians killed on our roads in 2007, 247 -- or 58 per cent -- were tested.

The figures also don't reflect those people whose impairment led to fatal injuries outside of road settings.

"We often see people who have been drinking that have fallen down the stairs or tripped at home and injured themselves," says trauma surgeon Dr. Thomas Esposito, in a statement issued by the Loyola University Health System. "Others have unwisely chosen to 'get into it' with guns, knives, bottles and fists."

A landmark study in the journal Injury Prevention found Jan. 1 has more pedestrian crash deaths, on average, than any other day of year, with 58 per cent of those killed having high blood-alcohol levels. Halloween ranks second in the data, which looks at the period between 1986 and 2002, followed by Dec. 23.

Susan Bondy, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, says this fits with previous research out of Ontario that found "a really clear pattern" of alcohol sales and consumption increasing during the summer and holiday periods.

"If we're drinking more, and there are more drinking occasions, it follows that the risks should increase," says Bondy. "Spacing out your drinks is a good idea, but the bottom line should be to limit the amount consumed. There's nothing magic that will turn wine into water."