What G in onion??? Where do they put that???
Linguistically, if I may be so bold: The ‘G’ should actually be a ‘J’ and that makes pronunciation of the word onion sound like ‘onjion’. If one went with the letter ‘G’ it would sound more like some weird antiquated firearm, something like”ungiun.”
Now for a bit of “real” enlightenment; there are more specific linguistic formations in the English language I would like to draw your attention to. There are two mid-western terms, aunt and wash, that apply here.
To understand how to pronounce these words properly there are two pronunciation rules that apply. Not everyone is aware of these rules so let me explain:
The word aunt uses a little known rule of a silent ‘U’. Hence, the way you actually pronounce “aunt” is to phonetically say “ant.” This little known ‘U’ rule is called, “The ‘U’ is seen but is silent” rule.”
Now in the case of the word wash, there is an entirely different structural rule. In this case the word wash has the, “unseen but not silent ‘R’ rule.” Therefore, the correct pronunciation of the word “wash” is to actually verbalize the ‘R’ in front of the ‘sh’ sound. This means that if the ‘R’ rule were not enforced it would be spelled “warsh.”
To make this easy to understand a simple sentence using these words might be useful. Using the proper structure it might go something like, “My Ant wants me to warsh her car for her.”
I hope this is helpful.
My family in Missouri all said warsh. And Ant.
It's even worse up here in Maine.
>> My Ont Linder (from Florider) wants me to wash her caw in the doy-yod. <<
Y’all grew up in Indianer, didn’y ya?
Head-scratching ????? I didn't follow this discussion, but this analysis seems non-sequitur. The 'g' in onion refers to the Old French word oignon, not English. Oh sure, there were maybe 100 spellings of 'onion' in Middle English, and such usages included the 'g', the 'y' and the 'ȝ' [I find the 'j' only in Lincolnshire (no date)].
I refer you to The Oxford English Dictionary entry for 'onion'. [my link stopped working; if needed, try to find a 'search' field.] The French supposedly took the word from the Latin unis 'one', presumably because there are no real roots in the ground, just a bulb. [the Latin for 'onion' is cæca]. The French actually used the word 'oignon' to refer to the bulb of the lily - the fleur-de-lis, their national symbol.
The 'j' is a linguistic Anglicization often otherwise pronounced as 'y' - e.g. Jerusalem = Yerushaláyim. The OED gives the pronunciation as: Brit. /ˈʌnjən/ , U.S. /ˈənj(ə)n/ ... where the 'j' phonetically indicates the 'y' - the front palatal approximant articulation - as a lenition of 'j'.
Whew! What was that? 😨