"Authentic pronunciation" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

For a number of years, the preferred media pronunciation on both Fox and CNN
seems to have been "Ont."

One of those things I notice. I can't even tell you the last time I heard
one of a leading telejournalists say "ant."

As it was explained to me by a know-it-all some thirty-five years ago, "Ant"
is "insulting because an ant is an insect and an Ont isn't."

I couldn't argue with that logic. (Actually I could have but didn't want
to be bothered.)

JL
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 4:48 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Authentic pronunciation" (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 10:25 AM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
> <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
> > I've got relatives in East Tennessee who would say
> > "Aint Judy". Â I've had acquaintances from Memphis who would say (in
> > AAVE) "Ont Judy" (probably short for on-TEE).
>
> I have relatives in East Texas who would say "Aint [Name]."
>
> "_T_ for Texas, _T_ for Tennessee," as the old blues line-filler goes.
>
> I use BE "Ont [Name]," but, FWIW - IMO, this is a mere question of
> "different strokes" - I think that "auntie," pronounced "ON-tee,
> AN-tee, eynih," is just the ordinary diminutive of "aunt." As it
> happens, I've never heard "EYN-tih" aut sim., but I don't care to
> claim that it's non-occurrent. I may very well have heard it and not
> noticed it. Doesn't anybody be monitoring every word of every
> conversation all the time..
>
> My full brother, whom I've known since I was about eighteen months old
> and with whom I was in contact 24/7/365 or -6 till we were in our
> twenties, often catches my attention because he uses "ant." "Ant"?!
> WTF?! How'd *that* happen?
>
> Another mystery is that he says "million" as [mI at lj@n], whereas I say
> [mILjIn]. I consider either pronunciation to be standard. The mystery
> is why he's chosen to disrespect his elder brother by using different
> pronunciations. ;-)
>
> You know, I have to say, I've been reading, since at least the Pei day
> <har! har!>, that black people pretty generally use "ont" instead of
> "ant." I've tried not to bother myself about this, since I prefer to
> use "ont." However, over my lifetime, it's been my personal experience
> that "ant," usually Southernized as "aint," is really *not* noticeably
> less-common than "ont."
>
> OTOH, IME, I've almost never heard "ont" used by white people. My WAG
> is that, because "ont" is so rare in white speech, it  *seems* to
> white researchers that BE-speakers are big "ont"-users, when the fact
> of the matter is that "ont"/"ant" is more like
> "EH-conomic"/"EE-conomic" than like 75% "ont"/25% "ant" or some such.
>
> Of course, I'm only the merest dabbler in this field and I realize
> that there may well be strong evidence that I'm not aware of, because
> I'm not even well-read - I was truly *astounded* to discover, as I
> flipped through it, that Skeats's "English Dialects" was *not* about
> American English; it was a real W.T.F.?!!! moment  - let alone
> formally-trained, in dialectology, that makes hash of my impression.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> –––
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> –Mark Twain
>
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