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The story
A complaint post about Canadian public broadcaster CBC went viral on c/canada, a community on the Canadian site Lemmy. The poster pointed out that in a program covering a Spanish train accident, the host had mispronounced the “Z” in the abbreviation “LZB,” and also vented frustration that CBC’s website uses Microsoft’s login system and Cloudflare. In the comments, though, the actual pronunciation dispute took a back seat to an in-house debate over whether Canadians say “zed” or “zee” for the letter Z, somewhat burying the poster’s original complaint.
There’s no proper place to complain to CBC about every little thing, so I’m going to vent here instead.
I was watching the program “About That” covering the Spanish train accident, and the host kept pronouncing “LZB” like “El-See-Bee.” I don’t mind an accent, but I only noticed because I couldn’t make it out without the subtitles.
An accent is one thing, but I think someone on the production side should’ve told him how to say it and had the scene re-recorded. Since that didn’t happen, I decided to reach out instead. But it forces you to log in through Microsoft sign-in. Canada’s public broadcaster shouldn’t be using a Microsoft product for something this trivial — I noticed this when I clicked the link to the help center. On top of that, the site also runs on Cloudflare, which is likewise American tech it shouldn’t be using. For what it’s worth, I wanted to link the clip via Invidious (gem) instead of YouTube, but that requires an account, so here’s the YouTube link just to show the URL.
Source: youtube.com / Original video here
What people said
Calm down, it's okay. Hug Zeddy, take a deep breath, it's okay.
Everyone's still spelling "colour" with a "u" anyway (lol)
If you're about to claim you've never once heard a Canadian say "Zee" instead of "Zed," you either don't get out much or you're lying to yourself.
You have my permission to punch anyone who does that.
>In Canada, Z is often pronounced "zee" rather than "zed"
Nope, not true
Agreed, it's not that big a deal.
I prefer "zed" myself too, but it's not a huge issue, and I don't think Andrew Chang has that strong an accent anyway. To ears raised in Vancouver he sounds kind of Eastern, but eh, whatever.
He could've said "Lima Zulu Bravo" or something, but that'd be overkill for a short news clip.
>In Canada, Z is often pronounced "zee" rather than "zed"
That's the American pronunciation. It's only changed for some Canadians because the US unfortunately has such outsized influence on Canadian media. The official pronunciation still taught in schools is the Commonwealth-style "zed."
>Respecting how someone chooses to be addressed, like with Macron.
Good point.
Linienzugbeeinflussung (LZB), huh. Then "zee" really does make sense.
Glad we finally got to the bottom of it.
>If you're trying to tell Canadian and British accents apart
Same goes for the other Commonwealth countries too.
America's the odd one out here.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The “pronunciation of Z” at the center of this post varies a lot even within the English-speaking world. Former Commonwealth countries like the UK and Canada traditionally say “zed,” while in the US “zee” is standard — and in recent years, American media influence is said to have pushed more Canadians toward saying “zee” too. The pronunciation still officially taught in schools remains “zed.” The term at the root of it all, LZB (Linienzugbeeinflussung), is the abbreviation for a German automatic train protection system, mentioned in coverage of the Spanish train accident. What should have been a discussion about the accident’s cause and safety technology instead spiraled, in the comments, into an in-house linguistic debate over how Canadians pronounce Z rather than whether the host got it right — and the poster’s accompanying complaints about Microsoft login and Cloudflare usage drew almost no response.
*This article is excerpted from the thread “Complaining about CBC because I have no other way to do it.” on the overseas forum Lemmy c/canada, and has been freely translated into Japanese by our editorial team. Responsibility for the translation lies with this site.
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