Zai says:
February 24, 2009 at 7:51 pm
"Swardie – While I pronounce aunt as "awnt" I would not compare aunt with restaurant since its etymology is French and I am not sure where the word "aunt" comes from."

Aunt is indeed from french too. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=aunt
appearently it's etymologically related to (and means) "tante", which, since it's french uses yet another "a", closer to the english "far" for example, though more nasal.

I'm from sweden, so my personal pronounciation, which happens to be "awnt" doesn't mean so much, other than that I've tried to embrace brittish english more conciously to balance out my otherwise unproportional exposure to american english. Though in this particular case it seems obvious that "ant" isn't "the american variant, period", simply the choice of the majority.