For example: “Hey kids, aunty coming for a visit.”
Stupid stubby fingers!
PS. Your location would also be interesting (I’m in Eastern Canada).
PPS. “How do you aunt” is kinda zen…
“Ahnt”; I grew up in New England. I’m in Ontario, and my wife and everyone else here says “ant”. It will be interesting to see if our 3-year old picks up my pronunciation or his mother’s.
You’d probably be interested in the Dialect Survey: http://dialect.redlog.net/index.html. Specifically, this map: Dialect Survey Results
Here is a previous poll I started on the same question.
Darn. I did a search for thread titles with the word “aunt”, but that didn’t come up.
Sometimes it’s ant, sometimes it’s aunty. Depends on my mood, how I feel about the person, and their preference.
I’m from middle GA if it makes any difference.
Ant, or rather Anty.
Western Canada
Ant, but growing up in Florida, we used Tia.
Ant or Antie. Only pronounce it Ont if I’m being pseudo-posh for some reason.
TV people say aunt. Regular people say ant (most of them).
For both my aunts I pronounce it “ain’t”. (I’m a Southern girl.) For any other instance I pronounce it “ant”.
Ant. But I don’t vote in public polls.
It varies depending on usage. I use the ‘ahnt’ pronunciation when it’s immediately followed by the woman’s name, but the ‘ant’ pronunciation otherwise. So I have three aunts (pronounced ‘ants’), but my Aunt (pronounced ‘ahnt’) Camille lives the closest. Admittedly I pronounce them with very little difference between the two, my ‘ahnt’ could easily be heard as an ‘ant’. But it’s different in my head, which is what really counts, right?
I pronounce it as ant. Ahnt sounds pretentious, to me. I live and was raised in Texas.
And I generally start aunting by knitting a baby blanket.
I say ahnt. I was raised by Yankees, living all over the world. Some of my relatives go so far as to say arnt.
I changed the thread title to include the word “pronounce.”
Ahnt, born and raised in Kentucky.
Depends.
When there’s a name attached, it’s “ant.”
Ant Jane’s coming for a visit.
Sans name, it’s “ahnt.”
My ahnt is coming for a visit.
Ant, as in “Ohhh, I hate my uncle but I love my ant-lers, because antlers are a moose’s best friend. Het Rocky…”
Born in the midwest, raised in upstate NY, now living in New England. I’m a fish out of water here.
Something like ahnt; actually, much more like aren’t.
I grew up in south east England. This pronunciation difference is mainly a regional rather than a class thing, I think. Certainly there are British people who say ant, mainly, I think, from the north of England and Scotland, but you seem to get both forms, varying by region, in America too.