Sunday, June 24, 2007

The Language (from Carrie)

I've been thinking about these subtle differences in the language, and the puzzles it can create. We have set up our bank account at ANZ bank, which we have been referring to among ourselves as "A-N-Z(ee)"--but discovered on actually going there, that this pronunciation causes amusement among New Zealanders, for whom it is "A-N-Zed." I wonder how they sing the alphabet song. I wonder how come we changed it to zee, as I suppose it was originally zed for the American settlers. Most of the differences are easy to follow, as when we must find the proper car park, and buy a tin of tomatoes. Petrol is a bit dear, at 1.56 a litre, but I was very puzzled to be asked, at the grocery store, if I had "fly-buy's." Then we saw ads offering extra fly-buy's with your major purchases, and I finally looked it up on our indispensible source of information, the internet, and signed up for our own fly-buy card, which gives us points when we buy stuff, which we are going to be doing a lot of. Manford likes his coffee "flat white" (I think this is with cream and no sugar), and we were offered some nice biscuits (cookies) with our tea at Meeting this morning, and Emily got milo, which is a drink somewhat akin to hot chocolate. I'm not sure what it is made of, but I think not milo. We're not in Kansas anymore...

1 comment:

Ross said...

Here's a link to a page with one explanation for the use of zee in the US (I don't know if it will link or not)

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mzed.html

Google is your friend!