MORE ON “AUNT”.

MORE ON “AUNT”. When I looked further at the Quiz results on “aunt” (which is question 1 in the quiz), I recognized that my lifelong impressions about the pronunciation of “aunt” were wrong. I had always believed that pronouncing “aunt” like the “a” in palm was preferred by educated speakers or Eastern speakers—-that my teacher had found an imaginative way to get students to speak “more correctly”. However, the Quiz results show that 78% of the people in the country pronounce “aunt” like “ant”. The only areas where “aunt” is pronounced like “palm” are the Dakotas and Minnesota; Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut; and parts of Virginia and North Carolina. My teacher probably came from one of those areas—unless, of course, Miss Downton had a teacher when she was little that taught her that it was important that no one think that her uncle was married to an insect.