Must confess I the zee thing made me smile! I have the same problem when I get home. Also the same accent over-compensation when I reach darkest Wiltshire. I recently even caught myself in a terrible tomayto mishap!

My current plan is to retaliate for the “dark days” by subverting Tampa. I’ve converted the office to the way of PG Tips, “water” increasingly has the ‘t’ put in, “cheerio” is sneaking into common use along with a most expressive expletive that rhymes with banker! (huge grin on my face the other day when the boss started using that word!).

My standard response, when someone asks me “What’s your/that accent ?”, is “*I* don’t have an accent. *You* do !” …

“Where’s your accent from ?” earns a response of a variation on “My mouth/throat.” …

When followed by “No, I mean, where are you from ?”, my response is “Glendale” … (Los Angeles is a suburb of Glendale, California – well, actually, it’s a conurb, but we are talking with Americans, in such a conversation … (grin)) …

“No ! *Before* that ?” gets ‘em “North Hollywood …” …

The intelligent ones ask “Where were you born ?” or “Where are you from, originally ?” – and they earn the response of “Glasgow, Scotland” …

When the mood strikes me, and the discussion gets around to the element Al, I often explain that, in the UK we call metals by their ‘pure’ or element name, not some commercial alloy name … so the element is “Aluminium” (Al) and the commonly-used alloy is “Aluminum” … just as an incandescent lightbuld will have a Tungsten filament which contains the element Wolfram (W) … and they nod, sagely … (grin) …

The fish is still ‘chew-na’ … and the day remains ‘tyoo’s-day’ …

And I say “jooty” rather than “doody” when I have to talk about it being done …

Incidentally, you don’t sound that much different from when you were at school and you can be immediately placed as coming from the North West. Which is good.

I too seem to “remember” my original accent as being Bez from the Happy Mondays. Which is odd given that the Chester accent was (we have to admit) closer to scouse than mancunian.

The thing with zee is that it becomes so much more than just a letter. It has a whole identity as part of the double act ‘Ee-Zee’ that abounds. Every service or product has it’s own Ee-Zee version.

And then there’s the store Lazboy, which for ages I thought was pronounced Lazboy, but of course now I know better. Zee: not just a letter but a useful syllable.