RI native, and the only people around here that say “ant” are people who aren’t from here. It’s “ahnt”. Certainly not an affectation, just a regional thing.
“Lect” is a word now? I realise it comes from dialect, idiolect and so forth, but I’ve never heard it by itself.
Anyway, once again massive confusion ensues in a SDMB pronunciation thread when people describe sounds in terms of their own accent. Saying that “aunt” rhymes with “can’t” is not that useful if people don’t know how you pronounce “can’t”.
So what about “Aint Bee”? Is that how they pronounce it in North Carolina?
I grew up in Ontario but have lived in Halifax, NS on and off for nine years since '84. I say aunt like “ant” but the locals in Halifax say it like “ont”. It’s a regional thing here but I just can’t bring myself to do it because I would feel pompous and pretentious (I’m not saying that it is pompous and pretentious, however).
Being biracial, I can attest to the cultural aspects of the pronunciation first hand. When I say aunt, not referring to a specific aunt, or to aunts on my father’s side, who are white, I pronounce it like the name of the insect. So I have an Ant Brenda, and an Ant Susanne. When referring to aunts on my mother’s side, who are black, I say Ont, which rhymes with font, so I have an Ont Mabel, and an Ont Ruth. It’s so much a part of my siblings and me at this point that we couldn’t even make a mistake and say Ant Mabel, or Ont Brenda.
The perfectionist in me knows it should rhyme with haunt or jaunt, but I don’t know anyone who pronounces it this way.
Exactly. And all the people who say “ant” aren’t uneducated like my snap judgment insists, but also speaking properly for their regions.
Ever since I saw Them!, I’ve pronounced it “ant.”
Same here. My husband’s family says “ant,” so I usually say that when I’m with them. This probably confuses my kids.
I pronounce it “awnt” since that’s how it’s supposed to be pronounced. That’s why that “u” is in there. I just figured it followed the same pattern as gaunt, taunt, audacity, augment, etc., all with the “aw” sound.
I say ‘ant’, but I know plenty of people (yes, a majority of them Black, but not all) who say ‘ont’.
The only exception I make is if I’m using it in a sentence or statement I feel might be ambiguous. For instance, if we had a family cookout, and I said “Wow! There were a lot of ‘ants’ there”, that might me confusing. Do I mean the relatives, or the bugs? (Nevermind the ones who are both. . .). In that specific case, I’ll be more indicative. Either I’ll pronounce it ‘onts’ if I’m talking about the relatives, or I’ll say to one of my kids “Gee, I think most of your ants were there”.
Love that poem.
A heraldry book of mine mentions, as a charge, “a hillock semé of aunts.”
My husband and I are non-native Rhode Islanders (from NY) and we say “ant” when referring to our own aunts and “ahnt” when referring to my native Rhode Islander son’s aunt’s. When I was little and moved to Bangor, ME, kids made fun of me for “ant” so I didn’t want that to happen to my son.
Also, in RI, many aunts are called “ahnty” including my one local sister.
OK, I still have no idea what you’re talking about, but that’s probably a reading failure on my part.
We are talking about accent, though, not dialect.
I say ‘ont’ when speaking of my female relatives in the abstract, and “Ant [insert name]” when addressing them directly.
It’s a personal thing, because the ‘ant’ pronunciation is associated with the poor working class New Orleans accent I’ve tried very hard to eliminate from my speech.
My wife is from Buffalo and she calls ‘bullshit’.
I presume it’s okay if I am actually British?
Those damned homonyms!
I’m with you, though. When I was younger, I was fascinated with British English. I spelled “blond” as “blonde” and always used the word “grey” over “gray.” I was even (wrongly) kicked out of a spelling bee because I spelled “theater” as “theatre.” I wasn’t trying to be pretentious (I was in fourth grade when this started) and I started pronouncing it so that it rhymes with haunt. I also started pronouncing “neither” as nye-ther instead of neee-ther and “either” as “eye-ther” instead of “eee-ther.”
I’m from Northern England and pronounce it to rhyme with “ant”.
Born and raised in central Massachusetts. I pronounce it ahnt, rhyming with “haunt.” I don’t think it’s pretentious since that’s how everyone in my family says it, and we’re pretty low key.
What I don’t understand is how I saw “ahnt”, but never picked up the old-school Boston pronunciation of bathroom with the long a: “baahth-room”. I use the short a, as in apple.