Do you say “zed” or “zee”?

If you’re in the UK, the answer might reveal your age, clinical linguist Dr Coral Hoh previously told HuffPost UK; younger people tend to prefer the Americanised version.

Even your use of the space bar can be a tell-tale sign of your generation.

And now, a new post shared to Reddit’s r/AskUK suggests new horror: apparently, the kids don’t say “noon”.

When booking a pub reservation, u/Gloomy_Stage says the young worker on the phone didn’t understand what they meant by the word.

“I was taken aback that the girl didn’t know what noon meant, she was probably young… but I had always assumed it was a commonly used word or am I getting old?” they asked.

We spoke to Anna Pyshna, spokesperson at online language learning platform Preply, about what was really going on.

There are some generational changes, Pyshna says, but not so much that the word has disappeared from young peoples’ minds entirely.

“Language changes over time, but that doesn’t mean older words just vanish,” she explained.

″‘Noon’ isn’t something most young people in the UK say often, but they still know what it means ― they’re just more likely to say ’12,′ ‘midday,’ or even ‘lunchtime’ instead.”

I’ll be honest, I don’t say it much as a woman in her 20s. And now that I think about it, I’m not sure my friends do either.

“The reason ‘noon’ might sound old-fashioned is because it has a more formal, almost clinical vibe to it,” she added (yep, I definitely think of it as a little stiff).

“Younger people tend to gravitate towards words that feel more fluid and less rigid. ‘Lunchtime,’ for example, is more relaxed and practical – often used in the context of daily routines.

″‘Noon,’ on the other hand, feels more tied to a schedule or specific time, which can feel a bit disconnected from the more laid-back way younger people communicate these days.”

Pyshna says that language tutors try to focus on language that is “current and natural,” meaning she’s less likely to teach the word to those learning English.

Tutors “understand that younger learners want to communicate in a way that aligns with how they actually speak ― rather than relying on older terms,” she added.

“So, while ‘noon’ might still be in the dictionary, it’s not something you’ll hear in everyday conversations among younger Brits.”

You might already know that how long you can stand on one leg has been linked to your brain age ― the position involves coordinating different parts of your body and mind, making it uniquely useful as a marker of ageing.

But not all the signs are medical, as anyone who’s ever looked at a festival lineup and thought “I don’t recognise a single name here” knows.

And recently, members of r/AskUK wondered whether or not the pronunciation of the letter “z” counts as one such marker.

“I was horrified to learn that a fully British colleague of mine says ‘zee’ for the letter zed and he says he always has. Is this now common and I have just lost touch?”, a now-deleted poster asked.

So, we spoke to clinical linguist and CEO of Dysolve, Dr Coral Hoh, about what was really going on.

“Yes, it’s generational but not confined to the UK alone,” the linguist said of the Americanised pronunciation.

“It is also the case in other English-speaking regions,” she told HuffPost UK.

“For example, in Southeast Asia, in countries like Singapore and Malaysia, speakers in their 30s-40s may use ‘zee’ and ‘zed’ interchangeably.”

Meanwhile, she says, “their younger counterparts prefer the former, thanks to American influence.”

Indeed New Zealand magazine North And South have written about increased Americanisms among their younger people.

Growing up in Ireland, people in my Disney Channel-reared age group were constantly being accused of the same thing (I’ll admit I choose “zee” over “zed,” though my older relatives would never).

“Americanisms are becoming more and more common, I blame YouTube,” Redditor u/Frst-Lengthiness-16 opined.

“My kids refuse to call biscuits by the correct name, calling them fucking ‘cookies.’”

Jane Setter, a professor of phonetics at the University of Reading, agrees, telling The Guardian: “For children, it could simply be because everyone is watching a particular trending YouTube influencer or group of influencers, or playing particular online interactive games, through word of mouth and a desire to fit in with their friends, that these people speak in a particular way, and the kids are using the features of those speakers with other kids to show they “belong” to that group.”

This may be part of the reason why Americanisms are so common among Gen Z (never said “Gen Zed,” I note) and younger…