I notice that some Americans pronounce this word to start with /a/, others to start with /eɪ/.

Is this a regional thing? Social? Something else?

If my second grade teacher heard you say ape-ricot, she would correct you with, “There is no “e” in ap-ricot!”

The intense nectar sweet taste of warm, soft, apricots right off the tree is something from my childhood that I will never forget. The sad taste of supermarket apricots is proof positive that it’s still one of those fruits that simply doesn’t develop its full flavor unless left on the tree until dead ripe and by then way too soft to pick and ship.

How would your second-grade teacher pronounce “apron”, happydog?

As for the taste of fruit --- oh, you’re so right!!! In my boyhood in Chile, in the valley of the Aconcagua (where the climate was about as near Paradise as you can get) we had about 20 or thirty kinds of fruit in our garden. --- Fruitwise, life since then has been one long, downward path; though in my country, we’ve not declined quite as far as in N. America, where (in town, at any rate) “fruit salad” means five different colours of turnip........

Merriam-Webster only gives the /’a/ pronunciation. American Heritage 4 lists both pronunciations. I’ve heard both too, and I use the /eɪ/ pronunciation myself (or at least I think I do most of the time). No clue if it’s regional.

How would your second-grade teacher pronounce “apron”, happydog?

Even by second grade, one has learned that one doesn’t attempt to correct the Teacher, especially with something so garish as actually being correct.

I was a slow learner: it was much later than second grade before I learned that.

Merriam-Webster only gives the /’a/ pronunciation. American Heritage 4 lists both pronunciations. I’ve heard both too, and I use the /eɪ/ pronunciation myself (or at least I think I do most of the time). No clue if it’s regional.

I’ve only heard the /eɪ/ pronunciation (which I, deficient in IPA would call a short “a” as in “at"). Never heard a “long A” as in Apron. Or if I did, I paid it no never-mind.

I’ve only heard the /eɪ/ pronunciation (which I, deficient in IPA would call a short “a” as in “at")
---

That seems a bit wonky. /eɪ/ is the vowel in May.

EDIT: In Australia, only the /eɪ/ pronunciation is used.
BTW, the reason I ask is that I saw The Wizard Of Oz on TV and heard You’re So Vain on the radio within a week of each other.
(Also really paid attention to the lyrics of the latter for the first time, and hence learnt the word gavotte.)

Over here in Rightpondia the long A is universal: it’s news to me that there’s any other way of pronouncing apricot. I’m not sure I would even recognise the word first off if it were pronounced with a short A.