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stranger
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stranger
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OOPS! Didn't read the complete thread before posting this. So southerners aren't as anomalous as I thought... [Can anybody edit a post or can we only edit our own?]
from wwh: And while we're at it, I have never except in jest heard "aunt" pronounced like the appellation of a member of the family Formicidae.
So you haven't spent much time in central Oklahoma, eh? I grew up pronouncing aunt as ant. Upon arriving in the blessed north, a new friend politely pointed out the correct pronunciation (then there was root, which I was rhyming with put - egads), but now it grates a bit to hear the southern version.
Anybody else have southern exposure? I'm curious about whether this is truly a case of southern weirdness [no offense to anybody who loves it] or just a regional anomaly.
Happy Holidays!
diborg
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear diborg: I spent a couple days visiting my son in Airbase near Enid, OK when he was in AF there. I didn't have any contact with local people. I'm not good at recognizing regional accents anyway. I have no idea how Southerners and Westerners detect my origin so quickly. Most of them however, make gross hilarious efforts to mimic it.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I grew up in Chicago. My mother was a Wisconsin farm girl, my father a northern urban born in Scotland who spent most of his youth in New York or Chicago. I never heard it spoken with that horrid aw or ah sound except in jest or pretension.
Just goes to show, I guess
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Faldage,
And you were the one writing recently about how children learn English! It's all environment, not pretension, unless, of course, the environment is ridden with pretension, always a possibility.
Off a bit, I still can't understand why my father's sisters were always ants to me and my mother's, aunts. Both families came from southern Virginia, and there ain't much that's pretentious here.
And off a bit more, my daughter insists upon pronouncing either "EYE-thur." She picked that up years ago in middle school and it plumb (plum? still don't know) goes against my grain.
Best regards,
Ant Wordwind
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Dear Dub' Dub I reserve the right to make fun of others (and myself) without using  s. Eyethur is about all I hear anymore. In my yoot it always sounded pretentious.
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Faldage says, I grew up in Chicago. My mother was a Wisconsin farm girl ... I never heard it ["aunt"] spoken with that horrid aw or ah sound ..." and, "Eyethur is about all I hear anymore. In my yoot it always sounded pretentious."
Faldage, I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and still live there and my wife is a Wisconsin farm girl. The pronunciations we hear here are ant and eether.
To local ears, awnt, ahnt and eyether still sound pretentious or foreign.
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Carpal Tunnel
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how do y'all hear the phrase "agony aunts"?
(jest wonderin')
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addict
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addict
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I have always said eyether, but say ant. However, I find I have unusual pronunciations for a Buffalonian (one born and raised in the Buffalo, NY area).
How does everyone say roof?
And I have a hard time pronouncing, (of all things), apple! I have this way of saying ahpple, and can't get myself to say it with the harder A sound.
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Just wonderin' what in Sam's Hill "agony aunts" are? Is this something esoteric or just still another huge gap in my education?
Pronunciation: AGGG-uh-knee ants, unless you're using it in a poem and you want it to rhyme with taunts, haunts, daunts, etc. (Although wouldn't it be fun to write a poem in which you're thinking that agony aunts is agony ants, and you want the reader to read tants, hants, and dants. Now there's a creative nudge!)
Angel, good to see you again. I say "rooooooof," but lots of people here in Virginia say "ruff"; I think they's all pups, however.
Best regards,
DubDub
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archetypically, they are the likes of advice columnists Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren.
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