Everything from A to Zed

Lots of little things catch your attention when you’re new to a culture. Sometimes they make perfect sense, sometimes they don’t, and sometimes they just add a bit of spice to one’s day.

Here in Australia, for example, the last letter of the alphabet is not pronounced “zee.” It’s “zed.” So one of the major banks, ANZ, is not described as “A-N-Zee” or “Ann-Zee,” but “Ann-zed.”

Sports scores are not “six to nothing” but “six to nil.” Games or “matches” are called “tests” here.

And then there’s cricket, which can have wildly lopsided scores and gets reported in language I don’t understand. I saw this in a local paper recently: “Hayden lasted five deliveries as Valley reached 6-191 at stumps. Marriott took a career-best 6-27 to rout Wests for 97 in friendly bowling conditions.” Marriott, the story goes on, “bowled 13 overs.”

Ooookaaay. If you say so.

Of course, I’m just showing how little I know about cricket. All I know for sure is that much of the world loves the sport almost as much as soccer (which is called “foosball” in Mexico) and “footie,” the term here for rugby, which is a kind of fast-paced football without pads or huddles.

Of course, I could puzzle most Australians by talking about the infield fly rule, but if I bring up baseball, I lay myself open to the question: “Why do you Americans call it ‘the World Series’ when it involves only United States teams?”

Stumps me. Because we tend to think we ARE the world?

Still, I’m delighted the Astros have made the playoffs and since I get to read the Houston Chronicle on line each day, I’m cheering them on, hoping they make it to the Part-of-North-America Series and bowl over the Yankees four tests to nil.

I suppose scores like 191-6 would be too much to hope for, but they would be nice.

-- Bob