rents - parents

[Jonathan Lighter]

I first heard "the polloi" from my eighth-grade English teacher. I didn't
get suckered into using it, however.

/za/ is the only way I've heard the other. Naturally I've never heard a
pronunciation like /piz@/ . Perhaps the word comes originally from the "za"
of a guy named "Pete."

JL

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 8:44 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: rents - parents
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 4:29 AM, Damien Hall <D.Hall at kent.ac.uk> wrote:
> > 'za' ('pizza')
>
> Is there an accepted phonetics, yet? I've *heard* both [tsa] - first
> as used by the actor who voices the Britspeaking "Stewie Griffin" -
> but since heard in the wild, and [za].
>
> FWIW, my intuition, well, WAG, is that [za] is a "corrected"
> spelling-pronunciation. I *hope* that, at least. Initial [ts] in
> English as spoken by the polloi* is to die for.
>
> *A Phd/DD on another site argued strenuously, over several posts, that
> "_the_ polloi" is the proper English form, given _hoi_ "the." I
> thought that he was joking.
>
> He was serious.
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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