Topic: pizzas or pizza's

[milkanannan]

I think it’s possible that both meanings will exist and we will just have to do a bit of work based on context. Like if I started talking about “20’s gangsters”, you’ll probably know that I was referring to a prohibition-era, Irish- and Italian-American criminal gangs. The things we’ll be referencing after the 2020’s will be very different (global nuclear warfare, the Great Population Decimation, The Trump Empire, you know, the nostalgic stuff).

You guys could be right, but no doubt lots of clarification and confusion. I mean, even '20s gangsters' - could totally refer to the Trump admin's second term. (Let's hope not.)

[Mandle]

You might be right, but I’d actually assume the opposite, at least in the western world. Decades in the 20th Century were quite iconic due to rapid social progress, tech and lifestyle/culture changes, major changes in warfare, etc. I think this became the basis for labels like ‘the 20s’ becoming a reference to a specific period of change. I don’t think these labels will suddenly shift to decades this century.

I think the first time was the term "The Roaring '20s" people used to refer to the "good old days" of the 1920s before the Stock Market Crash and the Great Dustbowl.

[heltenjon]

Halfway on topic, as it concerns s's: Isn't there a rule that "eyes" should be pronounced "eyez"? Perhaps I'm just confusing it with the price-prize distinction, but when the hit song "I can see the fire in your eyes" is on, I hear "the fire in your ice", which is somewhat unfortunate.

[Ali]

I think that's just a matter of accent. Brits tend to make esses into zeds. I notice that some British Muslims pronounce esses as esses - especially in 'Islam' and 'Muslim', but it's not against any rule.

[heltenjon]

So for most non-brits, "eyes" and "ice" sounds the same?

[Snarky]

Ali is no doubt correct that this may vary with accent, but some googling indicates that the general rule (which most native speakers will probably not be consciously aware of) is that the pluralizing -s is pronounced voiced, /z/, if the word ends with a vowel or glide, a voiced consonant, or a sibilant (in which case you have to insert a vowel so that you get -es, pronounced /ɪz/ or /əz/).

So you have (in half-assed notation):
tree-z (vowel)
eye-z (glide)
bed-z (voiced consonant)
wish-ez (sibilant)

However, when you have a word ending in an unvoiced consonant, the -s is unvoiced, /s/:
pin-s
cop-s

I'd also think, though, that the actual realization of these sounds will depend on the surrounding speech segments: for example, it's fairly common for sentence-final sounds to become spontaneously devoiced (because it's harder to articulate the voicing when there's no vowel following it).

[Mandle]

Snarky, I was literally just teaching that exact lesson to kids yesterday. You covered a few more cases than I thought of, but I will introduce them later on. YOINK!

[Babar]

So you have (in half-assed notation):
tree-z (vowel)
eye-z (glide)
bed-z (voiced consonant)
wish-ez (sibilant)

However, when you have a word ending in an unvoiced consonant, the -s is unvoiced, /s/:
pin-s
cop-s

I'm more of just a speaker than someone who knows all the intricate rules, so to be totally honest, I don't get the differences between the classifications you listed, but I've always pronounced it 'pinz' (the link shows a word with a different meaning, but I can't find audio of 'pins' on the internet anywhere).

[Snarky]

You're right, Babar, and that's because /n/ is of course a voiced consonant (in English; Welsh apparently has a voiceless N). I stupidly mixed it up with the N–M distinction (alveolar vs. bilabial), thinking it fit the T–D, K–G, P–B pattern.

I should say that voiced and voiceless S is one of the things I'm pretty sure I regularly screw up in my own speech, along with the NEAR/SQUARE vowel types (my vowels are a very strange mix of English and American).