Actually, I do think they’re ignorant of the correct pronounciation. I don’t think they hear a difference between the way they say it and the way other people say it. If “ignorant” bothers you, then I take it back, I didn’t mean to offend anyone. I guess my point was that if you’re a professional, and it’s your job to speak to people from all over the country as a representative of the company we work for, those people will have a much better impression of you (and the company) if the word was pronounced properly.
And I’m not talking about dialects in different parts of the country; I have no problem with regional accents. But come on- the word has three letters in it. “Ask” is pronounced the way it’s written, with the ‘s’ before the ‘k’. It’s not spelled “a-k-s”. Maybe it was at one time, as the posts upthread may indicate, but not these days.
Are the responders to my last post really making the argument that “a-k-s” is a correct pronounciation?
It’s correct relative to some varieties of English (the native varieties of those who are using it), incorrect relative to other varieties (including the standard varieties, sure).
Arguing from spelling is letting the tail wag the dog; spoken language is the primary form. Besides, it was never my contention that most people pronounce it as “aks”, just that those who do are generally justified in doing so in most contexts.
That people will generally have a better impression of you if you use the “ask” pronunciation is true; the varieties of English which use “aks” are generally lower-prestige, and of course the standard varieties are higher-prestige. Same thing happens if you use a strongly Southern-associated variety of English, say, as has been lamented. Heaven help you if you speak African-American Vernacular English. But regardless of what other people will think of you, and perhaps the best way to conduct business as a corporate representative, in almost all contexts, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with speaking the way you’re accustomed to by virtue of your particular speech community. If I see two people on the street having a conversation using the non-standard pronunciation, and think to myself “They should be speaking my way”, I’m making just as incorrect an assertion as if I saw two people speaking in Chinese and thought “They should be speaking English”.
McNew: What I take issue with is the notion that non-standard forms are “incorrect” English. They are incorrect for the way you speak. Your speech is incorrect for the way they speak. Linguistically, at least, the two forms are equal, just different. So: your speech may be socially superior, but it’s not inherently superior or more correct or better.
The problem is, whose form to use? Who decides what is “correct” and what is “incorrect”? The answer is usually that the speech of those who happen to have money, power, and influence (often correlated with education) wins. So, basically, people are punished socially for not talking like educated middle-aged, middle-class white males. How dare they attempt to represent the company as members of their own (implicitly inferior) subculture? This is an educated middle-aged, middle-class, white male company!
Of course, on the flip side, having a single standard form of language makes communication a lot easier. We have to choose somebody’s speech, why not the ones who control the culture in other ways? So we have the written language, based on that same group’s speech, and it is certainly wrong to write “He axed me when the payment was doo, I tole him on the forth of April.”
Perhaps rather than characterizing them as lazy or ignorant, you can say “bravely resisting the homogenization of American culture by persisting in their native speech patterns despite the social and therefore financial stigma they inevitably encounter.”
Quite a few English words came from Danish, which, in the 10th century, was probably not yet a distinct language from Norwegian. The words don’t always mean the same thing though. For instance “sky” means something like “cloudiness” in Danish.
Why the English decided “cloudiness” was a good word for what’s over our heads I can’t imagine.
If I remember my historical linguistics accurately, most of the short English words with “SK” in them come from Danish, although apparently not in the case of “ask”.
If you want to sound uneducated, pronounce it “aks.”
Period.
If you can hear and understand the difference, but insist on using “aks” because you feel there is a good historical or cultural reason, have those reasons at hand so that you can defend your usage if challenged.
There are some usages that make a simple statement: “I am unable to grasp the English language.” “Aks” is one of those usages. So is nucular, but I digress.
A thousand years ago, ask and aks were both valid English. The difference was regional, rather than one of class or education.
Around five hundred years ago, the British monarchy became much more powerful and the dialects spoken in the areas surrounding the royal court became much more prestigious. The king said ask. People in other parts of England, especially rural areas, continued to say aks, though fewer and fewer over time. People who mattered aped the diction of the court. “The King’s English” became the standard of the realm.
When slaves were needed to work plantations in the New World, the first were poor English whites who did not talk like the king. They said aks.
When eventually the practice of enslaving whites became problematic, the slavers switched to black Africans, who learned their English not from elite speakers of the King’s English, but from poor whites–people who said aks.
Saying aks for ask has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with class. To imply otherwise demonstrates a serious lack of both intelligence and class.
