Thread for random inquiries (anyone may participate)

[DoomUK]

Phobus said:

"Fries" are chips :P

I dunno, I always refer to thin chips as fries. Don't tell me you've ever gone to McDonalds or KFC and asked for "chips" (at least hypothetically, let's not start a "fast food is shit and I never eat it" discussion here).

[printz]

jongo said:

Am i the only one who pronounces z like z instead of zee/zed?
Like this (click the "listen" button on the right, not on the left):
http://translate.google.com/#en|ru|zdAaemoan --- zdaemon
http://translate.google.com/#en|ru|zdum --- zdoom

No. But you're Russian, so it's no surprise. I guess English has no native words beginning with zd (but has with st), that's why z is pronounced separately there.

[Phobus]

It's always chips for me. I'll be honest though, I either ask for a meal or just the burger/chicken/wrap/whatever, so I don't believe I've ever addressed that particular scenario. I do refer to them as chips when talking about them though.

As we have such things as "Chippy's" here, I can't imagine why they'd ever be called fries :P

[DoomUK]

Chippies serve chips, not fries!

[Avoozl]

Sodaholic said:

Okay, seriously, why do some people pronounce the letter Z as "zed" instead of "zee"?

Over here it is pronounced "zed", however I prefer to pronounce it "zee" myself. :P

[Belial]

jongo said:

Am i the only one who pronounces z like z instead of zee/zed?

Nope.

[j4rio]

jongo said:
Am i the only one who pronounces z like z instead of zee/zed?

nah

http://translate.google.com/#da|sk|zduum

[dannebubinga]

How the hell do you explain how something is spelled with "z" if you say "zee"? It sounds exactly like "c". If you have password "zzccz123" and someone asks you to spell it out loud: "ccccc123"?

[Aliotroph?]

If you don't give codes and passwords in NATO phonetic alphabet you're doing it wrong. (Amusing side-note: doing so will often cause WWII vets to think you're "in the service.")

Zed does work better than zee if you need to tell someone the letter over the phone. However, when singing the alphabet song it seems best to use zee to make it rhyme nicely.

[Captain Toenail]

It always makes me chuckle when I see Americans referring to trousers as pants, and lets not get started on 'fanny'. But then some Americanisms I just find irritating, such as the phrase 'do the math'.

[Bucket]

dannebubinga said:

How the hell do you explain how something is spelled with "z" if you say "zee"? It sounds exactly like "c". If you have password "zzccz123" and someone asks you to spell it out loud: "ccccc123"?

I tell them it's none of their fucking business what my password is.
Besides, it's clear that purpose of "zed" isn't to clear up that confusion, otherwise you'd also have different names for B, C, D, E, G, P, T, and V.

[DuckReconMajor]

bed ced ded ed ged ped ted ved

[Krispy]

Aliotroph? said:

Because we're not Americans. Your post succinctly demonstrates the lack of worldly knowledge of the average American.

Way to throw a whole country considerably larger than all of Europe into one big stereotype because of one dumb question. How many times have you personally left your country?

[printz]

dannebubinga said:

How the hell do you explain how something is spelled with "z" if you say "zee"? It sounds exactly like "c". If you have password "zzccz123" and someone asks you to spell it out loud: "ccccc123"?

Didn't you think this over? If there's a confusion, one will just use another word. Same like how there are two names, "oh" and "zero", for 0. They'll probably say either zed or zebra or whatever word begins with Z or with C.

[Maes]

dannebubinga said:

How the hell do you explain how something is spelled with "z" if you say "zee"? It sounds exactly like "c".

As a foreigner, I've never confused the two. The "zee" sound is totally different than the "cee"/"see" sound (those two DO sound exactly the same, even with IPA phonetic spelling), at least with the Received Pronounciation I was taught, and pretty much any British or American flick I've watched. Maybe some comical/hick accent might mix them up, but normally there's no problem.

However, just for the "once in a blue moon's scenario", there IS an occasion where zee/see/cee would be confusing and potentially damaging/deadly: military/emergency voice telecommunitions over military-grade field radios, where normal spelling of words (for English) proved to be too ambiguous: all vowels could sound the same (especially since English has 14 of them!), many consonants too, etc. so the phonetic alphabet was invented. But unless you ever were in the Army (Signal Corps) or Law Enforcement or similar paramilitary organisations, it's unlikely you'll ever have to use it.

In Greek, words have quite long and unambiguous names, so such an alphabet would not be needed, but there's one nonetheless (and we had to master them both in Signal Corps).

dannebubinga said:

If you have password "zzccz123" and someone asks you to spell it out loud: "ccccc123"?

ZULU ZULU CHARLIE CHARLIE ZULU ONE TWO THREE ;-)

This works wonder over phone lines, too: I've used it to spell out strings/codes over the phone, and while "conventional" english spelling would frequently result in requests for repetition, none ever asked me to repeat a phonetic alphabet transmission twice.

[dannebubinga]

printz said:

Didn't you think this over? If there's a confusion, one will just use another word. Same like how there are two names, "oh" and "zero", for 0. They'll probably say either zed or zebra or whatever word begins with Z or with C.

Of course I thought it over. I just find it funny that there are 2 letters that are pronounced the exact same way by some people, while other people say "zed" instead, thereby making a difference between the letters.

And going by the logic that you should pronounce the letter as it sounds in speech, how should we pronounce "w"? We sure can't say "double v", because that would be as crazy as saying "zed" about "z"?

(No. I'm not serious.)

[Maes]

It's funny how you're all debating over a problem which has been thorougly understood and solved, at least in some circles.

[Aliotroph?]

Krispy said:

Way to throw a whole country considerably larger than all of Europe into one big stereotype because of one dumb question. How many times have you personally left your country?

It's a common sort of question from Americans, though. The reason is probably partially because it's a whole country bigger than Europe. America is big enough and diverse enough that it can look to Americans like the range of ways they do things is the whole range.

American media helps this along too. It does it in two ways: by being big enough that many Americans need not see much else, and by assuming consumers are consistently so stupid that things need to be Americanized. The latter re-enforces the idea that they're stupid by never exposing most customers to anything else.

It's probably true that most people in most countries haven't been very far from home and don't know the customs of other countries or any of their history. Non-Americans just get a slight advantage due to the ubiquity of American TV. That advantage applies less to Canadians much of the time because our cities are mostly right next door to the USA and our culture is often very similar.

As for me, I've been to some different places. Some of my friends commented that I don't go on "normal" vacations. While they go to Mexico, I tend to end up in places like China or South Africa for a few weeks.

[printz]

Maes said:

In Greek, words have quite long and unambiguous names, so such an alphabet would not be needed, but there's one nonetheless (and we had to master them both in Signal Corps).

Lol, what military alphabet? Don't you have alpha, beta, gamma and so on? :P

[Maes]

printz said:

Lol, what military alphabet? Don't you have alpha, beta, gamma and so on? :P

Yeah, but it was not up to me to discuss with my superiors on whether it was really-really necessary ;-)

I always wondered why a phonetic alphabet was necessary, since the primary reason for its existence (spelling-sounding ambiguities) was already solved, with Greek. Almost all letters in the Greek alphabet have nice sounding names and most names are two or three syllabes-long, so those would not need to be changed.

There are however some potentially problematic ones like Μ,Ν,Ξ,Π,Φ,Χ,Ψ (Μι, Νι, Ξι, Πι, Φι, Χι, Ψι -> Mi, Ni, Ksi, Pi, Fi, Chi, Psi), H and Θ (Ήτα, Θήτα -> Ita, Thita) and Τ (Ταυ -> Taf), too short and with similar-sounding syllabes. For this reason, the Army uses a phonetic alphabet which uses longer words for every letter, and renames even the "good" ones.

Hellenic Phonetic alphabet.

Most of the new names are feminine, mythological or literary names of things. In all honesty, some like Alpha didn't need to be changed, but they did nevertheless e.g. Alpha -> Astir ("Star"), Beta -> Byron, Gamma -> Gali (literary name for "cat") etc.

English has the problem that almost all letters are spelled in one syllabe, and there's only so much clarity you can pack in one syllabe over a noisy channel (radio, telephone, or even dialectal/slurred speech). The vowels in most of these syllabes are also the same (bee, cee, dee, see, zee etc.), which does not help either.

[Aliotroph?]

What the hell happened to your link? Here's the same one. EDIT: I see your link is fixed. My link is the English version of the same information.

It's really fun listening to tech-support customers try and invent a phonetic alphabet as they go. "uuuhhh... B like boy, O like honest, Q like... cucumber..." WTF? Or "N like Nazi!" "Nazi?" "I thought we were going for a WWII theme."

[yellowmadness54]

This thread is lame.
I mean, I've seen some dumbass threads and discussions following them, but this one is just... lame. Its boring.

[Maes]

When yellowmadness54 says that a thread sucks, you've got a real stinker on your hands.

[Krispy]

Random inquiry time: I have too few clean socks and I'm sending my suitcase to California before I get there. Inquiry: Should I keep the socks here for two weeks or send them away? There is a washing machine in SoCal and I may run out if I send them off.

[myk]

Maes said:
The "zee" sound is totally different than the "cee"/"see" sound (those two DO sound exactly the same, even with IPA phonetic spelling), at least with the Received Pronounciation I was taught, and pretty much any British or American flick I've watched.

Yeah, not totally different but clearly distinguishable. They're "mouthed" in the same way, but in zee, the vocal chords vibrate. Zee is like a bee buzzing, see is like a snake hissing.

[Quast]

Krispy said:

Random inquiry time: I have too few clean socks and I'm sending my suitcase to California before I get there. Inquiry: Should I keep the socks here for two weeks or send them away? There is a washing machine in SoCal and I may run out if I send them off.

Err on the side of caution. If there is a chance, however small it may be, of running out of clean socks then by the gods don't ship them away! There are precious few things in life more valuable than clean socks.

[Blastfrog]

Quast said:

There are precious few things in life more valuable than clean socks.

It's not hard to create new clean socks by washing dirty ones. Besides that, only advice that I can give is keep your socks away from my cat, he tends to hoard them for some odd reason.

[Krispy]

Nice avatar ^

[Hellbent]

I lost my birth certificate and my passport and I was born in England but lived all mah life in USA. How do I get a new passport. Give. Make happen. No wait. I go Germany August.

[Krispy]

Technically if there's no paperwork, it didn't happen. Sorry, dude, you're not a person.