chantey, shanty: pronun. query

[Jonathan Lighter]

The etymology of English _chantey, shanty_, 'sailors' work song,' is
notoriously vexed and has been alluded to here in past years.

Does anyone know of a variety of English, possibly a creole in the Gulf or
Caribbean area, where SE  /tS/ (as in "chant") might routinely have been
replaced with /S/ (as in "shan't") ?

I'm floating an important SWAG here (that _chantey_ got its form from
_chant_ and its "preferred" /S/ pronunciation from some creole form) so I
would appreciate comments. (Including the appropriate, "Don't you know
*anything* about Caribbean English creole phonology?")

A bitter and perhaps no more likely alternative for some of us would be that
_chantey_ was *always* pronouncved with /tS/ until word went out erroneously
that it *must* derive from French _chanter, -ez_  (This derivation too seems
unlikely, and OED is noncommittal.)

JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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