News

Following two columns devoted to election questions, Collected Wisdom returns this week to its regular task of tackling any topic under the sun, from A to the 26th letter of the alphabet.

THE QUESTION: Why, asked Wayne McNulty of Wellington, Ont., do the English (and most Canadians) pronounce the last letter of the alphabet "zed" while the Americans pronounce it "zee"?

THE ANSWER: "The Roman alphabet is a descendant of the Greek alphabet, where zeta is the sixth letter," writes Henry Rogers, professor emeritus of the department of linguistics at the University of Toronto. "Since Latin had no Z sound, the Romans discarded zeta."

He says they also discarded the Greek names for the letters alpha, beta etc., and used names that turn up in modern English as something like eh, bee, cee etc. In time, however, the Romans became enamoured of all things Greek and borrowed many Greek words.

"Eventually, they thought that a letter for the Z sound would be useful for writing these borrowed words, so they resurrected zeta but they stuck it at the end of the alphabet and kept the Greek name."

Over time, he says, the name zeta turned into modern English "zed."

In the early 19th century, he says, American lexicographer Noah Webster published a dictionary of English reflecting a number of his personal quirks and preferences. For instance, he preferred spellings such as "color" and "center."

"He also felt that pronunciation of 'zed' should be regularized to 'zee' to agree with the names of other letters such as bee, cee, dee. Webster's dictionary was influential in early American schools, and many of his spellings and preferences became standard there. 'Zee' clearly won the day in the United States."

The rest of the English-speaking world, including Canada, kept the older "zed."

However, he says, through the expansion of U.S. culture, "zee" is spreading outside the United States.

THE QUESTION: "I was told that coffee and tea are equal in caffeine content, yet I find coffee so strong that drinking very much of it makes me shaky, but I can drink tea throughout the day," writes Bill Shannon of Ottawa.

THE ANSWER: Tea actually contains more caffeine than coffee, but that is on a pound-per-pound basis, writes Hayley Craig-Barnes of Toronto.

"The amount of tea required for one cup of brewed tea is far less than the amount of ground coffee used to brew a cup of coffee. Thus, the caffeine extracted from the one teaspoon of tea leaves is less than the amount extracted from the three tablespoons of coffee.

"The amount of caffeine released from the tea can depend on the quality of leaves used (tea bags usually contain lower-grade tea), the state of the leaf (whole or crushed up in a tea bag), the amount of tea and the steeping time."

HELP WANTED

"Smoking is banned on commercial airliners, so why are there ashtrays on even the newest of aircraft?" asks Carolyn Lane of Richmond Hill, Ont.

Why are there only 28 days in February? asks Brynley Hanson-Wright of Ottawa.

John Barbour of Toronto wonders if raccoons ever get sick from eating waste food out of green recycling bins.

Why are storm clouds black? asks Thomas Rendell Curran of Ottawa.

Send answers (and questions) to wisdom@globeandmail.com. Please include your name, location and a daytime phone number.