As usual, I blame the French.
An anecdote is not a cite.
I have traveled throughout the US and the world, and although “aks” is common enough, I have never heard it from someone of high academic achievement.
I have never heard anyone say “fwee”, so my request for a cite of a highly educated person doing so, who doesn’t have a speech impediment, stands.
Are you suggesting RightCoast is making it up? For what purpose? And what purpose would uncovering this falsehood serve?
I am not suggesting anything. I am asking for a cite as I have never heard an educated black person speak this way in my life.
Also, as it was his assertion that it is, to use his word “common,” it shouldn’t be a problem locate a cite for it.
Don’t forget class. Two people from the same geographical location might speak with *completely *different accents because of this .
This meme annoys me. It implies that one’s own experiences have less value than those of some Internet stranger who posted something in his/her blog. Someone started a related BBQ Pit thread; I’ll link to it if there’s interest and we can continue discussion there.
I look forward to it, although I think it would be more constructive as a GD thread.
I suppose some people purposely choose their accent, but the vast majority don’t. I’m not sure where you get that idea from. Or, as many of my relatives would say: I’m not sure where you go that idear from. Adding sounds, dropping sounds and even transposing sounds are common attributes of accents. I doubt anyone wakes up in the morning and says: I’m going to say “aks” today instead of “ask”.
It’s not a yes or no thing whether people can change their accents. Some can to a much greater degree than others can. A lot depends on the motivation that people have to change their accent. Many English-language actors these days have learned to adopt a new accent for their roles. There are even some actors who have switched completely to new accents in everyday life because they expect to be using them in so many roles. Of course it has been common for a long time for people from poorer backgrounds to pick up accents that make them sound more like they come from richer ones in order to pass better in those richer backgrounds. But not everyone from a poorer background would want to do so. Someone might be good at imitating accents other than their own. You could ask them why they don’t always use an upper-class accent instead of the lower-class one they grew up speaking. They might tell you, “Because I don’t want to be beaten up by my buddies for showing off.” Many people are able to switch back and forth between two accents depending on what situation they are in. This is call code-switching.
Onomatopoeia,
The original claim was “It’s very common to hear…”, and getting just a single educated black person being documented as pronouncing things as “fwee” and “aks” isn’t going to do anything to support that claim.
The proper cite to ask for is, “Could you please show me any statistical evidence to support the position that it is very common to hear educated black people pronounce those words that way?”
It’d be like if someone said, “it’s very common to kill people by shooting them with guns,” and then you come back and say, “oh really? Show me one person who has been shot with a gun!” Even if the person can come back with an example, you can just say “well that doesn’t prove it’s common!” And you’re right, it doesn’t. Because the cite you were asking for was irrelevant to the original claim.
If you’re going to play the “cite?” game, play it right.
Your observation is probably logically correct. But of course I wasn’t referring to what I had read, I was referring to what I have personally observed over the past few decades. (And I don’t owe Onomatopoeia any research anyway.) I would guess about half of the black people I talk to or hear talking says “aks”. A much smaller percentage say “fwee”. And in the circles I travel, most people have at least a Bachelors degree.
You’re absolutely right, in general, but the case I’m referring to is not regional. We have a spectrum of races living, working and shopping together with lots of friendly, daily interaction, and yet only blacks ever have a black accent. I just have to believe it’s a choice.
But your general point reminds me of a humorous incident. A while back, my brother lived in the backwoods of Mississippi for a year or so. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like the fact that the people there would never accept him because he wasn’t from there. They told him so. So he made no attempt to blend in.
When he came back north and we were in a department store shopping, he asked a female clerk where he could find some product he was looking for. The clerk smiled a delighted smile and asked “where are you from?” That made him furious! He had picked up the accent so strongly that people from his own hometown thought he was from down south.
It was very hard to keep from laughing out loud! 
You originally asked him to cite one person:
He did exactly that. You have no justification for your complaint.
I didn’t issue a complaint. I asked for a cite. I don’t consider non verifiable data a cite. Anecdotes are certainly not accepted as cites in scholarly works, nor as evidence in legal works.
**RightCoast **can state anything he wants but, until an actual cite is presented, it is simply his word that it is “common” for educated black people to say “aks” and “fwee” and, I’m sorry, that just doesn’t hold water without at least some evidence. If it exists and is presented then my request for a cite will have been satisfied.
My request stands.
Or he can simply ignore me. His choice. Either way is fine with me.
You say your request stands, but can you prove it? 
I’ve heard that before the linguistically unifying force of radio in the early 20th century, the US was on the verge of breaking up into dialects like China, what with the way all the heavy accents were heading.
I didn’t know I had a slight Southern accent until I moved up North, and the kids kept laughing because I stretch out my vowels in “-ill” words. To this day, I still have a hard time pronouncing “kill”, “will”, and “hill” so that they don’t sound like “keel”, “wheel”, and “heel”.
It has nothing to do with “informed choice”, at least for me. It’s just that once you learn something, it’s really hard to unlearn it.
My father was born and raised in California, and after living many years in Texas I still never thought he had developed much of a Texas accent, certainly not like all the locals, but his relatives back in California would always laugh at his “Texas accent” on the phone.
Siam Sam writes:
> I’ve heard that before the linguistically unifying force of radio in the early 20th
> century, the US was on the verge of breaking up into dialects like China, what
> with the way all the heavy accents were heading.
I’ve never heard that before, and I’m a little dubious. (Do you have a cite?) Of course, the so-called “dialects” of Chinese are actually different languages. Chinese is usually considered a group of perhaps sixteen different languages. They are closely related, but they are not mutually intelligible. It’s hard to believe that the dialects of American English would have separated that far.
In addition, if it were true that the dialects of American English were that close to breaking up into different languages, then surely the dialects of British English would have been much closer to breaking up into different languages. The dialects of British English have existed for considerably longer. They are usually considered to be as diverse as the dialects of American English, even though they are over a much smaller area.
I knew a guy that adopted 3 accents in a year and a half in sequence. Northeast US, British and Southern US. He didn’t code switch. Only one of them sounded authentic to natives though.