The German
As it turns out, both of these pronunciations are correct, and which you use depends on where in the world you live. And zed is closer to other languages' spelling and pronunciation of the letter; for instance, the French say zède, German speakers say zet, and Spanish speakers say zeta.
4. The German Letter “s” is pronounced like the English “z” in most cases. Whenever the letter “s” occurs at the beginning of a German word, and is followed by a vowel, it is pronounced as if it were the English “z”.
The German consonant 'z' is pronounced in the same manner as the English 'ts' sound that is found at the end of words such as 'cats', 'lots' or 'sits'.
z: The letter z represents the sound /t͡s/. The sound, a product of the High German consonant shift, has been written with z since Old High German in the 8th century.
Around 300 BC, the Roman Censor Appius Claudius Caecus removed Z from the alphabet. His justification was that Z had become archaic: the pronunciation of /z/ had become /r/ by a process called rhotacism, rendering the letter Z useless. At the same time, S was also removed, and G was added … but that's another story.
When a Z or a ZZ appear in a word in German and Italian, they do not exactly sound like the English Z. In fact they sound a bit closer to TZ or TS, and we approximate that into our speech as a TZ or TS. That is why we pronounce them that way, because they are borrowed! We borrow a lot of words from other languages.
J in German is pronounced as “yott” (rhyming with “thought”). The German J is pronounced as an English Y. This can be observed in words like ja, Jammer, and Jahr. Q in German shares a similarity with English: it is always paired with a U.
The letter ß (also known as sharp S, German: Eszett or scharfes S) is a letter in the German alphabet. It is the only German letter that is not part of the basic Latin alphabet. The letter is pronounced [s] (like the "s" in "see") and is not used in any other language.
The pronunciation zee is a 17th-century variant of zed. The earliest citation is from a 1677 language textbook, A New Spelling Book by Thomas Lye, a Nonconformist minister and teacher in London, England.
It did, after all, come first. Much of our modern alphabet comes directly from the Greek alphabet, including a letter, that looked just like our “Z,” that the Greeks called “zeta.” “Zeta” evolved into the French “zede,” which in turn gave us “zed” as English was shaped by Romance languages like French.
Zee is the American way of saying the letter z. Zed is the British way. Neither is right or wrong, and nobody is ignorant for pronouncing z the way they do. The zed pronunciation is older, and it more closely resembles the Greek letter, zeta, from which the English letter is derived.
The British and others pronounce “z”, “zed”, owing to the origin of the letter “z”, the Greek letter “Zeta”. This gave rise to the Old French “zede”, which resulted in the English “zed” around the 15th century.
It's only in American English that it's pronounced as zee, with Candian English sometimes being the exception, depending on which option the speaker prefers. Zee became the standard way to pronounce Z in the United States in the 19th century.
Place your fingertips gently on the front of your throat and pronounce a vowel sound. Notice that while you are pronouncing the sound, you feel a vibration. This is the thing you need to add to make a [z]. Now make an ess sound, and then stop without changing the position of your mouth or tongue.
Originally, in Middle High German, the sound /f/ had been voiced in some dialects and was therefore written ⟨v⟩. Contemporary German has gone back to the unvoiced pronunciation, but idiosyncratically sometimes retained the medieval spelling.
The gargling R is clearly pronounced. In standard German, the pronunciation is a rasping, throat-clearing sound, like a less extreme version of the sound made when gargling. Note that the gargling R is a rather short sound. Avoid the common temptation to exaggerate the gargling R sound.
Ukraine – on 22 May 2022, the Verkhovna Rada banned the symbols "Z" and "V" used to promote the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but agreed with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to allow their use for educational or historical purposes.
z or s? In British English, s is generally used in such words as recognise, authorise. The letter z is used in American English in such words as recognize or authorize. However, it is not wrong to use z in such words when using British English as standard.