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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: Aunt
ant....
THIS.
THIS!
Exactly. "axe", "irregardless", "supposably" all just sound ignorant.
The only one that sounds incorrect to me is the aint.
I actually use both aunt and ant and for the most part couldn't care less whether someone uses one form or the other. But I nodded my head when I read Dana's reply that Aunt (like haunt) sounds snobby (I was thinking hoity toity FWIW) and Auntie (like hauntie) is even worse.
And yet I couldn't give a rat's ass how someone says it.
As for "axe" - it used to get on my nerves more than it does now. Axe rolls off the tongue much more easily than "ask." And if you always heard it growing up that way (like warsh instead of wash, ideer instead of idea, etc.), it is really difficult to change. To mock someone for saying axe when they otherwise pronounce everything perfectly and have proper grammar almost seems racist since it is a pronounciation that is predominately used in African American circles. (definitely not saying anyone here is being that way - just food for thought).
It's like making fun of me relentlessly because when I say "wolf" it sounds like "woof" to most people except a few Asians who can tell I use a very soft L and who say it the same way I do.
I also say nucular instead of nuclear and until everyone made fun of GW for it I never noticed I did that. I have to really concentrate to say new-clee-ur. No one in my family says it that way. It just comes out that way for me for some reason.
So someone can and should concentrate and say "ask" if they don't want to sound ignorant. But to judge them if they are being relaxed and familiar, if they are stressed, or if they are otherwise in a hurried communication state where their regional accents or dialect will emerge is just more uptight than I really have time for in my old age.
- Paula Deen to 104.1 KRBE's Producer Eric 9/17/2011
I say Ant. My husband and his family say Antie (they are British).
Ditto Michelle. This thread makes me feel kinda yucky.
SURVEY SAYS.....!!!
http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_1.html
75% of people say "Ant"
The link has maps of the respondents pronunciation choice and location.
Red Dahlia for the win!
The 0.58% for "ain't" cracks me up, and the map for that beats all the others.
- Paula Deen to 104.1 KRBE's Producer Eric 9/17/2011
I say "ant"
When DH says "breakfast" he says it really fast and it sounds like "breffist." Drives me crazy, but that's how his parents say it too. I'm trying sooooo hard to teach my kids to say breaKfast.
Breffist would drive me batty! My mom says "shivvy" for Chevy. WHY?
Ok, I'm being racist for wanting people to pronounce correctly? Um, no. And I don't think axe rolls off a tongue any easier than ask.
I'm not asking everyone to talk like white people, heaven knows there are plenty of white people who can't speak correctly. It's not about race. Just freaking pronounce correctly. Look at the letters in order.
my photography blog
Jax, maybe you missed this part of my comment: (definitely not saying anyone here is being that way - just food for thought).
- Paula Deen to 104.1 KRBE's Producer Eric 9/17/2011
My FIL says "breffkiss." At least I don't live with him every day.
DH says "Massatwoshits." At least we don't talk about Massachussettes frequently, although it has been more lately with Romney up for the potential GOP nomination.
- Paula Deen to 104.1 KRBE's Producer Eric 9/17/2011
I invite all of you to just one event with my ILs...that would give fodder for pronunciation and grammar posts for a month.
You know I love you Mrs Michelle but I couldn't disagree with you more on this one.
I don't think it's racist at all and believe me that I've corrected my fair share of people over time that say axe instead of ask. They are two different things with completely different meanings. I've heard this word butchered from people in all walks of life and races. I see it in the same way when people say Pacific in stead of specific. does one roll off the tongue easier than the other? I don't think so but I recognize that some people have a hard time saying it. Does that mean they should never try to say it correctly. Not in my mind.
Call me racist.
I 100% agree with Almond. I know people of all shapes and colors that say "axe" instead of "ask". I don't think it has a thing to do with race, or hearing things a certain way growing up. Just because you heard it that way from 20 relatives growing up, doesn't make it right and IMO doesn't give you an excuse to not pronounce things correctly. Unless you live in a colony of goats, living in the real world, you would hear and learn the correct way to pronounce words. I appreciate that it might be hard to change, but using the excuse that you've always heard it that way is just that, an excuse.
:::stands and applauds almond:::
i take it upon myself every day to correct students who speak in this manner. its not appropriate, no matter who you are or the color of your skin.
Good thing you stopped me from breaking up with you yesterday. I would have to come groveling back otherwise
I'm glad you don't feel it's racist, Almond. But I wasn't alone in feeling yucky about the direction of the post.
It's one thing to list a string of words mispronounced via metathesis like Jax did (showing an overall intolerance to metathesis through examples such as ax/ask, mascarpone/marscapone, nuclear/nucular).
It is another to use "axe" as a contrasting example of annoyance and incorrect pronunciation as one's very first rebuttal to an African American person's (albeit ridiculous) supposition that the "correct" way to say "aunt" is the pronunciation that rhymes with "haunt."
I'd bet you $50 if I c&p'd this post over to the P&CE board where there are a lot more Blacks and mixed races from all SES than on this board, you'd see a lot more of a reaction that it felt like the post was going in a yucky direction, along the lines of a racist one.
- Paula Deen to 104.1 KRBE's Producer Eric 9/17/2011
Woah. You're reading way too much into this. Nowhere in this entire post was that ever implied. EVER. You were the first person to bring up race, and you're not letting it go.
Seriously.
Since I was the first one to bring up the word "axe", I'll add that I was annoyed b/c a white co-worker had just used it & it was fresh on my mind. You're being ridiculous & insulting.
And I would emphatically say that the use of the non-word axe for ask isn't about race. SEC maybe but race, surely not. I can tell you the first person I ever heard use the word that way was Hispanic. I looked at him like he had 3 heads. I put using the word axe in the same category of saying, "Where do you stay?" Same person asked me that and I had to think about what he was saying to try and figure out what he meant.
Things like that are an improper use of the English language period. No race involved. It might be what all the cool kids are saying, it might be what you hear from family, that doesn't make it correct.
Let's not use these words because they are more personal to us and our generation. Does text speak get the same reaction from you when you see it? That those of us who refuse to venture into it (I won't even acknowledge conversations in that mess) are racists? Probably not because it's so prevalent right? I don't care who you are and which purple turnip family you came from "school will never skool, or cool/ kewl, see you later/ CUl8tr" in my book. Never.
To say that a certain racial population uses the world "axe" predominantly or has some kind of ownership over the word is in itself labeling because it's simply not true.
Maybe my dad was too much of a grammarian when we moved here because he corrected us at every turn when those kind of idioms were brought into our vocabulary. "But our friends were using it," was never a good enough reason.
- Paula Deen to 104.1 KRBE's Producer Eric 9/17/2011
Therein lies the problem doesn't it. We are so quick to put a label on something or a situation because it appears to give definition to a problem that sometimes doesn't really have an answer. I dare any study to show the first or only people to use the word axe is and are exclusively black. What a load of garbage. Give a nod to the idea that this is a black issue and it can be studied, poor money into a thesis, and someone will solve for world piece and how to bring the races together when we understand the "African American" culture/race. How does this line of thinking flow for all of the other races that do the exact same thing? My point is the use of the word is not about race.
And I don't think I was ever mocking anyone who has used the term or downgrading them at that. I don't think anyone else here was either. It's easier to point out something that is clearly understood to be incorrect grammatically so it may seem that everyone is ganging up on someone else. But if one person says 2+1 is 4 and everyone else knows it to be 3, are we mocking that person by pointing out the answer is 3. No one said what an idiot, you know it's 3.