Aksing a question

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

This morning I was watching the learning channel (TLC)up here in Canada for a few moments before heading out for the day. I was admiring the extremely colourful dress of the participants in a wedding that had taken place in Ghana(one old man stood out in a western style dark suit). The conversation in fluent English was indicative of a well educated group of people.

Suddenly I heard one gentleman in the midst of a stream of excellent English enunciation pronounce the word ask as “aks”. It was like listening to Celine Dion (I like her) suddenly breaking her voice on a high note. Then he repeated it.

Now I have talked to many people from the Congo, Nigeria South Africa not to mention Europe and Asia and I have never heard them aks. Of course we are all familiar with this pronunciation among many African- Americans.

Can anyone explain the reason for a person from Ghana to aks ?

[tomndebb]

Probably picked it up with his British education (particularly if he lived outside the city when attending Oxford, as it is often heard in the Midlands). /aks/ as the pronunciation for ask is dcumented in a number of British dialects extending back several hundred years. Alternatively, he learned English from either a Brit from the Midlands or a Yank from the Mississippi region who happened to be living in Africa.

The Word Maven of ax - ask.

[Kimstu]

“Aksing” (more often spelled “axing”) for “asking” is also standard pronunciation in some US dialects. Apparently it’s descended from a fourteenth-century metathesis:

The Old English verb áscian underwent a normal linguistic process called metathesis sometime in the 14th century. Metathesis is what occurs when two sounds or syllables switch places in a word. This happens all the time in spoken language (think nuclear pronounced as /nukular/ and asterisk pronounced as /asteriks/).

Metathesis is usually a slip of the tongue, but (as in the cases of /asteriks/ and /nukular/) it can become a variant of the original word. This alternative version in Old English was axian or acsian, as in Chaucer’s: “I axe, why the fyfte man Was nought housband to the Samaritan?” (Wife’s Prologue 1386). Ascian and axian co-existed and evolved separately in various regions of England. The ascian version gives us the modern standard English ask, but the axian variant ax can still be found in England’s Midland and Southern dialects.

In American English, the /aks/ pronunciation was originally dominant in New England. The popularity of this pronunciation faded in the North early in the 19th century as it became more common in the South. Today the pronunciation is perceived in the US as either Southern or African-American. Both of these perceptions underestimate the popularity of the form.

/aks/ is still found frequently in the South, and is a characteristic of some speech communities as far North as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Iowa. It is one of the shared characteristics between African-American English and Southern dialects of American English. The wide distribution of speakers from these two groups accounts for the presence of the /aks/ pronunciation in Northern urban communities.

I grew up in rural southern New Jersey in the US, and indeed, a lot of people still “ax” questions there.