Zed or Zee

All through school I was taught to pronounce the alphabet ‘Z’ as ‘zed’. Then one fine day this TV Channel came up with the name ZTV. I would call it Z (zed) TV until I realized it was supposed to be called Zee TV. I wondered why. I ignored the implication. For me a ‘Z’ was a zed. Finally, when I found everybody calling it Zee TV, I had to follow suit.

I was always proud of my English (the proper British English that was taught in our Schools). When speaking to some foreigners on the phone during my early years at work, I felt a bit embarrassed if I pronounced a ‘0’ as zero and the person at the other end repeated it as ‘O’ as in ‘oh’. Since then I have come a long way. Now I proudly (or call it stubbornly) repeat ‘zero’ if I hear an ‘O’. I am an Indian and we pronounce it so here; and the foreigners better learn to live with it if they want to interact with us.

I also learnt to pronounce ‘Envelope’ as en-vel-ope at school, but I managed to twist it to be pronounced as ‘Auhnvelope’ because my friend pronounced it so and it sounded so polished. Somehow that pronunciation has stuck to me. I would be uncomfortably saying it any other way. Thankfully I didn’t pick up the pronunciation ‘Collaage’ in place of ‘College’ when I joined college; and I am glad for it.

‘Anyway’ has since become ‘Anyways’ and very generously dropped even in the typical Hindi TV serials; and I refuse to accept that.

I continued stubbornly to pronounce ‘Z’ as zed. Zee was for the Americans and I had never been a follower of American English. But now I am serious in doubt whether I am right, whether I am ignoring the fact that India is changing. Somehow Zed has actually become Zee. The Chinese have arrived too and even they call it Zee. I found my colleagues dropping the word Zee. I tried to ignore it as I thought they were interacting with Americans and trying to show off. But when I saw a Business channel repeating Zee, I seriously wondered what world I had been living in all these years. Had I had a loss of memory? Why couldn’t I recall the word ‘Zee’ being used in the past? Or maybe my school was outdated and we were not taught what everyone was being taught. I badly miss my school friends. Atleast I could have compared notes with them. Maybe I am just growing old.

Coming back to the ‘Z’. That is not the only trouble it gave me. Computerisation has further got me confused. Where earlier I would be confident of where to use an ‘S’ and where to use a ‘Z’, now I am not so sure. Initially, when the computer would automatically change my ‘S’ to ‘Z’, I would go back and change it manually. But over a period of time, I have started being submissive to the computer and accept its authority as final. In fact, now when in doubt over a spelling, I let the computer decide (even though it doesn’t know what is a cheque). Who cares whether it is American or British English, as long as the message gets across.