'mo = homo

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>in my experience, 'rents is fairly recent.  but my experience of 'za
>goes back to the late 50s, when my college roommate used it frequently.

I've heard "'za" since ca. 1966, "'rents" never (in real-life use).

"Parents" > "'rents" seems odd, and it may well be that the actual
evolution was "parental units" > "'rental units" (and/or "parentals") >
"'rents" or so. Jonathon Green's dictionary entry suggests something like
this. [Another conceivable origin with stress would be "in loco parentis",
which expression was bandied about some during student unrest in the 1960's.]

"'Za" remains as ostensibly reflecting a really really unstressed syllable.
Are there any other good clear examples like this?

I think it might be arguable that "'za" doesn't really reflect any spoken
syllable, but rather is taken directly from the orthography. The stressed
version of the last syllable of "pizza" would be /sa/ or maybe /tsa/, I
would think. "'Za" is always /za/ AFAIK ... or are there other pronunciations?

-- Doug Wilson