I was listening to a story on the radio today that used this word, and the pronunciation was so drawn out that I almost didn’t recognize it.
I’ve always pronounced it like “ant” and felt that people who say “awnt” or even “aaaahnt” are being slightly pretentious.
But I’m curious how other dopers feel about it.
I’ve wanted to start this thread for years!
Me and my family rhyme it with rant. Most people born here (Boston) rhyme it with haunt.
I’m not sure it’s pretentious so much as regional. My last GF and I argued over the pronuciation of scallops.
I think “ont” is the British pronunciation.
Raold Dahl had a poem about a spoiled American brat who orders an anteater. He specifically says that those strange Americans say “aunt” as “ant” (and the boy ends up getting eaten by the anteater after mentioning his aunt). So I’m pretty sure that’s the standard way of speaking in the UK.
Aunt, the same as haunt. That is the correct way to me, as the other way is a small crawling insect.
Seriously, when it’s that easy to differentiate between homonyms, I prefer to do so.
I am from south east England (though I live in the U.S. now, so that may mess up your statistics), and I say something akin to “awnt” (actually, it is more like how I would say “aren’t,”* and certainly nothing like “haunt”). My mother’s sisters are not insects, and, while alive, they were not ghosts either.
In the north of England, however, where I have also lived (and, I think, in Scotland) many people say do “ant,” so this is not a British/American thing, it is regional (within both countries I believe).
I have never heard anyone say “ont.”
*Maybe that is what you mean by “aaahnt” but I don’t see why all the extra a’s are appropriate. I don’t drag out the a.
They say it that way because that’s how it’s supposed to be pronounced:D
My wife and I argue about this all the time. She grew up in New Jersey and she says it wrong. Aunt rhymes with ant.
Aren’t “ont” and “awnt” the same?
The people I grew up with pronounce it a little longer than if just saying the insect, like “Ah-unt”–it almost has two syllables. But then, they have southern accents, too.
I have known two classes* of people who pronounce it “awnt.” Very snobbish old Bostonian (well actually, Newburyport, which I heard as “New Report” the first 700 times I heard him say it). He also pronounced “drama” as “dray-ma.” He was the first; eventually I ran into another Bostonian snob who pronounced it the same way.
And college-educated black women of a certain age. Older. The one I’m thinking of is probably in her early 70s right now. This is not to say that younger ones wouldn’t, I just don’t recall it from people my age (not that I’ve heard a lot of people pronounce it when I was paying attention).
*Groups? Circles? I know they aren’t classes.
Of course not. Ont rhymes with font. Awnt rhymes with haunt.
Southerner here–if it’s used before the name, it’s ant. But otherwise, closer to ay-unt. “Ant Jane is my favorite ay-unt.”
I pronounce it “ant”.
My dad, who grew up in rural south Georgia, pronounced it like “ain’t”. He had an Ain’t Lois and an Ain’t Mary. (And Mary was pronounced “May-ree”, with the accent on the first syllable.) I don’t think he would pronounce it that way when referring to other people’s aunts, but only for those particular relatives from “down home”.
Australian, so I say “aahnt”. For me it rhymes with "can’t " but not “cant”, “rant” or “plant”. I pronounce “aunt” the same as “aren’t”.
Always pronounced it like “ant” and when adding the dimunitive “y” or “ie” to it, it sounds like “antee”. Typical usage where I was born (Northwestern Ontario), yet just across the river in Minnesota, one would hear “awnt” most often, which always sounded (for want of a better term) very “Bostonian”, or even very English-sounding.
Me too—it sounds like they’re affecting a British accent for just that one word. But I fully admit that my reaction is arbitrary and unjustifiable, since it’s spelled like it ought to rhyme with “haunt.” But when you’ve had members of your family referred to as “ants” for as long as you can remember, it just sounds wrong to hear people like that called “awnts.”
Still, it doesn’t sound nearly as jarringly pretentious as people who lapse into a French accent for the duration of one word and pronounce “vase” as “vahz” rather than to rhyme with “case.”
Born in Pennsylvania. Always have pronounced it as “ant.”
Usually “ant”, but I know a lot of black folks who say “awn-tee” with the emphasis on the “tee”. Like Awn, T. So sometimes I pronounce it that way.
I’m confused. Do you have an unusual accent for your area or something? ‘Aren’t’ and ‘aunt’ are the same in my RP accent, and aaahnt is a reasonable way of writing that sound out without phonetic symbols - it is a long a sound, though obviously not as long as the aaaaa you’d say if you’re in a dentist’s chair. ‘Awnt’ and ‘haunt’ rhyme.
If you have an ordinary SE England accent, how can you say aunt to rhyme with aren’t but then think it’s pronounced awnt and doesn’t rhyme with haunt?
I’m Australian, and I pronounce it to rhyme with “can’t”.