Note that the source from which the word “aunt” derives, which is the word “tante” in French, is spelled with just an “a” in modern French, not “au.” I think that trying to compare it with “haunt” or “daunt” might not be the correct approach. Compare the word “pants” (or the word “pantaloon,” from which “pants” derives and which is also borrowed from French). Everybody pronounces that word with a vowel like in the word “ant.” So we have a number of words like “aunt,” “haunt,” “daunt,” and “pantaloon” which were borrowed into Middle English from French not long after the Norman Conquest. I suspect that right from the beginning of their use in Middle English, all these words had a couple of variant pronunciations, one rhyming with the pronunciation of “ant” and the other rhyming with the New England pronunciation of “aunt.” Some dialects pronounced them one way and some pronounced them another way. These variant pronunciations continued to exist right up to the present in the case of “aunt,” so it’s pronounced one way in most American dialects (including that of Ohio) and another way in most British dialects and in New England.
In the case of “haunt” and “daunt,” the pronunciation that rhymed with “ant” disappeared, so all English speakers now pronounce it to rhyme with the New England pronunciation of “aunt.” In the case of “pants,” the pronunciation that rhymed with the New England pronunciation of “aunt” dropped out, so now all English speakers now pronounce it to rhyme with the pronunciation of “ant.” The regularization of spelling in English didn’t happen till a couple of centuries after these words were borrowed from French, so it was mostly a matter of luck which of the two variant pronunciations happened to be the one that was chosen when the spelling was regularized.
Incidentally, I grew up in rural northwest Ohio, and I still shudder every time I hear someone use the New England pronunciation of “aunt.”
I grew up in the Cleveland area, but I learned to say “aunt” to rhyme with “font”. I still use that pronunciation when addressing Aunt Pat or Aunt Sharon, but I’ve generally said the word for an uncle’s wife or parent’s sister “ant” in conversations with non-family members since I learned most people I met preferred that pronunciation. When I was in college in Virginia, one of my friends rhymed “aunt” with “haunt”. He didn’t have what most people would call a Southern accent, by the way, even though he was a “local”.
“Get your kicks on ROOOT 66”, but “a paper ROWT”.
And “roof” indeed rhymes with “hoof”.
Yes and only a New Yorker like Cole Porter would rhyme “idea” and “here” and “near” - as in The mere idea of you…The longing here for you…You’ll never know how slow the moments go 'til I’m near to you … etc. etc.
I was born in Indianapolis, as was my Mom…my father, though born in Fort Smith, AR, grew up in Indianapolis; we came out here in 1952, and I grew up imitating my parents’ Indiana acent. (My father did not speak with a Southern accent, let alone one like Bill Clinton’s.)
Anyway, when I was a high-school senior I commented in journalism class that I did not speak English with a regional accent. I was immediately contradicted by the teacher, who grew up in Southern California (and may have been born here, too). She was an English major–at UCLA–and said I do in fact have a “midwestern twang.”
So what? I pronounce wash as “wohsh,” aunt to rhyme with “cant.”
What is strange is that my Mom’s older sisters, who have lived in Indianapolis just about all their lives, sound to me as if they speak with a Southern accent!
In high school I also knew a girl (who was in the journalism class as well) born in Gary, IN; she lived for a while in the Phoenix area…her accent sounded more similar to a New York-New Jersey accent (in the government class there were two girls from New Jersey; one, who had been in Southern California on and off, did not speak with any perceptible accent; the other, transferred to Southern California at the very start of her senior year, spoke with as strong a New York area accent as Judge Judy Sheindlin or Fran Drescher.)
Mainer here. Never heard anyone say aunt like font unless they were parodying some snooty accent. In my area, it was always like the French tante, like ahnt sort of, not ant or font. Font?
You know, having had people listen to the way I say ‘aunt’ lately, you’re right, cleops. I don’t say it like it rhymes with ‘gaunt’ and the like, more like the French word ‘tante’ and ‘debutante’.
Yes, Porter was born in Peru, IN but I don’t think he was “from” there. I was born in Webster, WI but I’m not from there because I grew up in Iowa and have lived the greater part of my life in California.
Porter spent most of his life in high class schools in the East, in Europe and in New York.
The only time I ever heard “greasy” pronounced with the “z” sound was when Peter Lorre guested on the old Jack Benny Show in the early 60s. Lorre used the line from a commercial, “Are you still using that gree-zee kid stuff in your hair?”
I’ve lived in central Indiana most of my life. I only heard people say awnt occasionally on TV and radio. I remember elementary school teachers telling us it was ant, not awnt.
I believe the oddities of midwestern speech come from the fact that the area was settled by a hodgepodge of traders, trappers, miners, and farmers from all over Europe. Settled, that is, after the earlier inhabitants were rudely forced out. Some of us say bush with sound as in cool , just as it would be spoken is Spanish. Some of us say wash as warsh, not rhyming with harsh , but more like the middle bit in gorse or course. I believe this comes from the French influence, where lavarse is about washing. (I speak no French; I got that from a trilingual hand soap carton.)
Some of us even have the loose-jawed vowels of the mountain folks. Generally (very generally) speaking, their speech flowed from Celtic miners, who followed the hills and coal veins from the Carolinas to the hills of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Some examples: Aunt, haunt, and can’t come out as aint (remember Aint Bee?) haint, and cain’t.
This is getting long, so I’ll leave the northern midwest to somebody else.
Some of us say bush with sound as in cool , just as it would be spoken is Spanish. Some of us say wash as warsh, not rhyming with harsh , but more like the middle bit in gorse or course. I believe this comes from the French influence, where lavarse is about washing. (I speak no French; I got that from a trilingual hand soap carton.)