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?!
Zed’s dead baby, Zed’s dead.
/s
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/
- American
- American
- American
- American
- American
The consequence of this is that we lose our culture, but as some French statesman said: why bother when everyone is enjoying everything?
no one says Gen Zed
Odd choice of example, I hear it often.
Yeah my daughter referred to herself as a zedder yesterday. I hear it often enough
Zedda is a new one to me, but I reckon it will stick.
I’ve heard people say Jay Zed. I’ve also heard Zed Zed Top.
Language is weird.
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.
Well, Trump did get elected. Do you’re probably correct.
That’s enough internet for me for today. Sick fuck. At least put a NSFL warning next time.
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.
Exactly what we did. Demonised the filth, before the infection could spread.
A picket on the sidewalk is a great idea.
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.
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.
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?
We’re not America.
Here we say football to refer to the game where players use their feet to move an egg shaped object.
Look out, you’ll upset the rugby fans.
Tell me you have no understanding of the history of football sports without…
Also that you don’t know what the word “ball” means.
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.
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.
As long as they don’t call it footy its fine. Football is a broad term for a lot of codes.
⚽ 🇺🇸 SOCCER 🇦🇺 ⚽
A noble cause
We can have a little pogrom against usaians as a treat.
usaians
Cringe.
Just say Americans mate, we all know you’re not referring to the inhabitants of North America or South America, you’re not correcting any confusion only adding it by not using the countries name.
Nah, it’s funny ribbing them over their egotistical exceptionalism. you know they almost named their country freedonia?
Imagine meeting a German who refers to themselves as a Eurasian, cringe shit that is.
Despite the European Union not including all of Europe, a German would definitely call themselves European when describing themselves as a citizen of the EU and not an EUian
Is Australia the entire south of the world?
Is Australia the entire south of the world?
if you’re asking me to defend the decisions of the British you are looking in the wrong place lmfao.
Mexicans are americans.
Colombians are americans.
Brazilians are americans.
Unitedstates-ians are americans.
It’s funny because spanish doesn’t have this problem. They call the people from the US estadounidenses which basically is unitedstates-ian.
Mexicans are North Americans
Colombians are South Americans.
Brazilians are South Americans.
Americans are North America but from the country called the United States of America, hence why they get called Americans and Mexicans from Mexico are called Mexicans
Mexicans are americans.
No they aren’t.
Colombians are americans.
No they aren’t
Brazilians are americans.
No they aren’t.
In every country in the anglosphere, the word “America” is synonymous with “United States of America”. If you want to speak Spanish and talk about America as a single continent as I know is common in Latin American countries, go ahead. But that is not the way the English language is ever used by native speakers.
It also frankly doesn’t make sense. It’s based in the popular idea in Latin American countries that there are 6 continents, including one called “America”. I know the definition of “continent” is fuzzy and categorising them is ambiguous, but I maintain that the only sensible 6 continent model is one which merges Eurasia, relative to the 7 continent model. If you want to talk about the Americas as a single continent, the only way to do that without blatantly coming across as ridiculous is to have a 4 continent model containing Afro-Eurasia and America.
I’m in the Anglo sphere and we call the US the US, it’s citizens ‘US Citizens’ or ‘Yanks’, regardless of state. America is used to refer to the continents.
What you’re describing is a local Americanism and is not globally always true.
Then why is it the United States of Mexico? Calling them and Canadians just reeks of Manifest Destiny bullshit.
I’m sure Mexicans, Canadians, Colombians and Brazilians love being called Americans lol
I live in colombia. All colombians call themselves americans.
Huh, the Columbian I work with has only ever called himself Colombian
by not using the countries name
“America” is not their country’s name either (“USA” is actually closer, now that you mention it)
America is the country’s short/familiar name. Like how the Commonwealth of Australia is just called Australia, the United Mexican States is called Mexico, and the Republic of China is called Taiwan.
*USians
Your version has too many vowels.
Who the fuck says C to Z?
Rappers on a tight schedule?
Gotta make happy hour
It rhymes better with zee. Seeth.
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.
Lets go back to the old way of pronouncing Q also. It’s now pronounced like “coo”.
Petition to put the ampersand back in
I agree. Let’s also reintroduce thorn and wynn. Digraphs suck.
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.
I cringe if I hear someone use a hard Z
We coulda nipped this in the bud if we had joined together and formed AmerAustralia, a unified country. I tried to promote it. We’d each have each other’s backs when the other was sleeping. But noooo. And now Zed is dead. smh. I’m so sad for all that could have been.
The Austra-Zealand Union is what we should be looking at. Sure, the accent will take a hit, but we will be unstoppable in sports.
You’d both be on the same side of the world. Who would keep an eye on things while you sleep?
Right behind you my dude.
Don’t call him dude, buddy.
Wait until you hear what they did to the U.S. alphabet.
LMNOP is gone. They fucking killed it.
What?! Noooooooooo!
Close, but not quite. It’s actually “L M N O P”, but that’s okay keep trying!! ;)
Huh?
Basically the song got changed in elementary school from,
“ABCDEFG HIJKLMNOP QRS TUV WX Y and Z(ee)”
to
“ABCEFG HIJK L M N OPQ RSTUV WXY and Z”
Basically they slowed it down
So does it no longer go to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?
It “does”, which makes it even worse.
Sorry for the mobile YT link, starts at 25 seconds
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iVuk71UdIf8&t=27s&pp=2AEbkAIB
Wow, that was…something. Completely dumps the rhyming “ee”. If kids are having trouble with understanding elemeno, a better solution (IMO anyway, as someone who is not in any way an early learning educator) would be to just be more staccato with annunciating the l. m. n. o. peee.
