My mom studied English in college and one of the things she taught me growing up was that you should never look down on someone for the way they talk, due to complex grammatical and linguistic histories
@@daveh4925 LOL! Oh I wanna see you argue over grammatical issues when attacked by a gang of people with poor english grammar. … Hey did I discover an interesting pun here? "Poor english grammar" is the opposite of "pure english grammar".
Here in India, my college teacher once spent a whole lecture talking about data structure and memory allocation where she spoke "hard disks" as "hard dikss" for at least a dozen times. My friends had some very good moments back then.
That reminds me of the time in my coding bootcamp a few of us were snickering while the lecturer was discussing database "sharding" and kept saying the word indistinguishable to us in its various forms: "sharting," "shart," "sharted," "sharts."
@@rohitchaoji pronouncing schwa is very prominent in Indic languages, it is the default vowel in the abugida. Without it the whole language would break down. People usually prefer it when speaking English as well.
I'm embarrassed to say that I've judged people rather harshly for saying "aks" in the past with not a single thought for the shortcuts and technical mispronunciations in my own speech. It's a brilliant channel that challenges biases in good faith without putting anyone down.
We all have biases, and judge people by their speech. Even when you know that people in different places speak differently, you judge their intelligence by how they talk. I do it, too. I'm from the American South, but I still think Southern accents sound dumb. I know better. Still...
The difference is standardized “mispronunciations” for the sake of brevity or clarity, versus ignorant mispronunciations. It still matters. I dislike these videos that try to lump everything into one category. AKS is definitely ignorant in all but the rarest historical cases.
If people want to say AKS, they should spell it that way. It's an ignorant mispronunciation otherwise. I'm not at all embarrassed to say that I judge people for such things. I don't like reading comments that require me to mentally translate there/their/they're into the proper meaning, either. You bet your sweet 'aks' I judge them.
@@DisgruntledPigumon how is it at all ignorant? It's widely used, and just as easily understood. Language changes with the people who speak it, as long as your meaning is understood, that's really all that matters
In South Africa I had an economics professor who constantly spoke about the importance of “data mining” or “data mine”. Towards the end of the semester I finally worked out that he was saying “determine” or “determining”. I thought he just really liked working with data… All my notes made a lot more sense once I understood this 😅
I had a South Asian math teacher in middle school. I had a hard time figuring out the accent. One monday, I left my math book at home as we started a new chapter. The teacher kept referring to "people" throughout the lesson and I was totally lost. When I got home and turned to the page for the homework I realized that the lesson was on percentages. And the teacher was NOT referring to "thirty-two PER-son" but "32%".
currently in university and had that problem for the last 2 years. I have to actually decipher the words what my lectureres are saying coz of the accent difference.
I had this with a french client. He would ask 'how do you data-mine the coefficients in the model?' and I would say things like 'no, no the model is not data-mined' (because data mining is pejorative in investment applications). Eventually we figured it out - he was not insulting us.
EXPLANATION OF ENDING: "Asked" is so often pronounced exactly like "assed"/"arsed" that UA-cam'S AUTO CAPTIONING can't tell them apart. So when people say "half assed" or "can't be arsed", it sometimes captions this as "asked". I should have made this clearer.
I've always wandered why this term is so prevalent among 'black' 'biracial' Asian, Arab and White living in urban areas of the UK, talking with a exaggerated blaccent.
As a Jamaican myself I believe that it’s mostly from old English. Most of our creole especially in the rural areas that didn’t get urbanized through media m. You’ll hear most of the old words, perfect example my younger sister that grew up on Disney was watching Bridgeton today and heard them say “ Make haste” and realize that it’s the same as the creole “mekase” that we use in the same context but is no longer a common part of speech bcuz it’s been replaced with simply “ hurry up”
Would the expected form not be mekies? Or is that how what you spell "mekase" is pronounced? Because if not, I think the two expressions might not be cognates.
Amazing! As a young man (24) growing up in the United States, I always associated "aks" with AAVE. I had no idea it had such a rich history! It's a bit sad that there is such a big stigma towards speakers who prefer "aks" and other similar "non-standard" forms of words, because that's simply how languages evolve! Great video Dr. Lindsey! Edit: Sorry folks, I never meant to imply that AAVE doesn’t have a rich history of its own, or that I only now think it’s acceptable to say “aks” now that I have learned that its history is not connected with AAVE. I think AAVE is a fascinating variety of English, and I love all non-standard forms, regardless of their origin.
Is this a case of something that flips as aksed is easier to say? The drawback is it will be indistinguishable from axed. I think saying asterix is more common than asterisk because that requires more care. I presume that's not a common enough word to be dialectical variation.
@@dianep1385 And English Africans now evidently. This video is woke nonsense. Everyone knows it's black speak. Any historical usage in England is a coincidence.
I had put "aks" into the "dialectic variation" category but I didn't realise it went *_that_* far back. The ending was hysterical, watching the auto captioner trying to make sense of "can't be arsed".
Fascinating. Many years ago, in a linguistics class the professor explained, for African Americans who use aks for ask, the pronunciation was from West Africa and it arrived during the slave trade. I had never heard that aks was in Chaucer or Old English. I hope it is included in the curriculum today.
0:00 Introduction 0:44 'Aks' in Old English 1:30 'Aks' in Middle English 1:57 'Aks' in the Bible 2:44 'Aks' in the Shetland Islands 3:44 'Aks' in Jamaica & MLE 5:28 'Aks' in the USA & AAVE 6:10 Stereotyping & prejudice 7:50 'Ask' pronounced as 'ass' & 'arse'!
@@carlborg8023some the examples at the end were just demonstrating how the captions interpreted "ass" or "arse" as "ask", rather than showing people pronouncing "ask" that way.
"Mix" is another example of metathesis. The past participle of the Latin verb "miscere" is "mixtus." We still put the S before the C in "miscellaneous," but pretty much every variation on the original Latin infinitive is pronounced "mix."
examples of metathesis should be taught early on in english lessons so kids don't grow up with these biases. then again, it seems like english teachers themselves love to be nitpicky fools to begin with eh...
funnily enough, ‘wasp’ is also a result of metathesis! in Old English there are attestations of both wæps and wæsp, and the -ps form persisted until EME as far as i can tell. what’s even more curious is that this seems to have happened to a lot of other Germanic languages (see Dutch wesp, German Wespe, etc) and even other IE languages (like Latin vespa). kinda funny how nowadays people think -sp is hard to pronounce whereas thousands of years ago -sp is the easier/more favored variant :p
What I love about your videos is the fundemental acceptance that language moves on and changes, a constant reflection of our thoughts rather than a "correct" form
@@chameleonedm I know the majority of people who use it speak in a way based on lack of education (which was not their fault in previous generations) and ignorance.
My grandmother was born in Lancashire in 1897 and lived in the county all her life. She always said ‘axe’ and it’s still very frequently heard there today. It’s a common feature of Lancashire dialect poems.
Really, thanks! It seems like 'ax/aks' has been used as a non-standard form all over Britain, though it's declined drastically recently. If you know of a poem where it's used and have a moment, perhaps you could let me know? drgeofflindsey@gmail.com
I was born and raised in Lancashire and never heard “aks” as “ask” my whole life there. Granted, I heard a lot of phrases that would really have my fellow Yanks scratching their heads in puzzlement. But, let’s face it; people should know better. There is English, and there are mistakes.
@@julianwild8556, it may depend upon which part of Lancashire you were brought up in. I was brought up in Bolton and never came across the use of ax/aks until I moved to the more diverse area of Warrington right down in the south of old Lancashire.
@@julianwild8556 You are misinformed. English is pluricentric; it has several standards, and several dialects within those standards. An American spelling 'colour' as "color" or pronouncing 'car' with a hard 'r', is not making mistakes (as much as it may grate on commonwealth citizens such as myself); they're writing/speaking a standard form of North American English.
I confess I had just assumed it was a modern affectation but it's really fascinating to see how fragments of old English persist and reappear in different contexts.
@@Nakia11798 I've lived in Australia for 35 years and all that time I've heard it used, especially by bogans. Maybe Londoners picked it up from Neighbours or Home and Away!
Yeah, your average uneducated citizen isn't using it that way due to historical reasons. They're just so poorly educated they can't speak their native language correctly.
If this has done nothing more than equip me with the words, 'It's in Chaucer and the first English Bibles,' then it is a great video. Knowing the roots and possible roots of the current usage gives me pause to think too, and so it is even better. Thank you.
It's in quite a different form there and seems unrelated to the modern "stomzy" version which really makes a feature of it. The older variant seems to just be a slight pronouciation change, while this modern style is a different word. It's really disingenuous to relate it back to those older sources.
@@Theduckwebcomics I find it infuriating that you wrote all of that just to show you didn't watch the video or at least pay attention to it. The audacity to cling to your bigotry when an expert on the English language so freely posted this educational material. Do you think you know better or are you just daft?
As a non-native speaker I’ve never noticed this phenomenon. I wouldn’t have even noticed it if you hadn’t slowed it down. Thank you for making our ears more attentive!
@@SvobodovaEva I mostly notice it when I’m down visiting extended family in New Orleans. They’re white and they always use this pronunciation, though it’s a little bit less pronounced behind the southern drawl.
In a past job I had a Nigerian colleague who said "aks" and figured it was down to some influence from his native language/dialect. One of the computer programmes we used was referred to by the acronym "Wasp" which he pronounced "Waps", which I thought strengthened my theory. So to hear about the numerous other layers to it is fascinating! Edit for missing pertinent detail: the job was in South East London.
@@masonm9823 In southern German dialects, the word "wepsig" exists. It refers to (annoying) hyperactive behaviour, like you might associate with wasps. Also some of these dialects call a wasp ("Wespe" in Standard German) "Weps"
@@masonm9823 They don't seem to. However, in my native German dialect (Bavarian), the standard German 'Wespe' is in fact 'Weps'. It's always fascinating to see how dialects preserve forms which have been gone from the dominant version of a language for hundreds of years.
@@masonm9823 They don't, but for the sake of brevity I omitted that Middle English had all three of waspe, wasp and waps, and Proto-West-Germanic had wapsu.
Definitely a stigma in the US around axe/axed instead of ask/asked. As you said, strongly associated with black Americans and the idea of their speech being wrong or uneducated or something other.
Yeah I am not buying this explanation of the origin… it may coincidentally be true but it’s nearly universally African Americans ( and the under educated at that ) that say this in America. To me it’s just a linguistic quirk that has managed to stay alive because of pockets of small populations that allow it to persist. Like regional nouns and verbs … ( my region in the Midwest annoyingly has people who say “red up the table” instead of “set the table” for example )
The example of the scientist is wrong. He is not mispronouncing “half asked”. He is using the slang term “half assed”, which means un-prepared. American slang.
@@lewjames6688 - he's showing a reverse example where the person is in fact saying assed and the text transcription is showing asked instead. No one thinks "half asked" is a thing.
@@marqetteliz I'm not sure about that. He's a Brit and not an American, so his usage of American argot/slang might just be off the mark. At least if you aks me... LOL.
I've read that this particular pronunciation came from Southwest England with slave owners first to Barbados and then with their younger sons to the deep South.
I love your videos so much. I'm a native English speaker and yet every time I watch I learn not only completely new information, but new understanding into my native language.
Haven't watched the video yet, but I sincerely hope it includes that clip from Futurama where Leela explains that in the year 3000, "Aks" is now the regular pronunciation of the word, correcting Fry's pronunciation of "Ask".
In the Chicagoland area, in the 1970s, I was talking with a woman who was cleaning our house. I summarized a radio report of a murdering husband by saying, “A man axed his wife”. She understood this through an AAVE filter, and responded, “What did he aks her?” Your explanation gives me a greater appreciation of the issues involved in my memory from 50 years ago.
@H. Fritz You need to learn that slavery means ownership of a person as property, presumably including forced labor and no pay. Slavery has absolutely no relation to the situation that I described.
@@HFritz-kp8ioSo I can employ someone to clean/detail inside my car, but if I pay someone the same (or probably better) hourly rate to clean my house then it's slavery? Grow up.
I find these intertwinings between historical versions of words, native dialects and foreign accents fascinating. Here in Germany we also have lots of regional dialects and most people recognize that it would be silly to try and force local pronounciations onto each other. But it also shows the importance of a standardized written language in a united nation. I come from Hannover and I have the pleasure that our local dialect supplied most of what today is considered High German. Basically we already speak the "default" German as our native dialect, kind of comparable to how people learn Oxford English in school. But if a Bavarian was meeting up with a Frisian and both would speak their native dialect, they would barely be able to understand each other. So the most prevelant use of High German is as a bridge between different dialects. One reason more to consistently use it writing. Some Bavarian friends of mine use a written form of their dialect and I can barely understand what they are saying.
That’s actually not entirely accurate. The local dialect of Hannover used to be Low German (Plattdeutsch) but that dialect essentially died out and got more thoroughly replaced with Standard German than in some other areas. Standard German is literally eating up dialectal variation (enforcing Standard German in schools did a lot to kill off formerly thriving dialects, especially). -Sincerely, a disgruntled Swiss person who was forced to speak a foreign language daily for 12 years, writing in yet another foreign language
@@saschabaer3327 Do you know why it was decided to teach High German in school when I assume the Swiss German dialects aren't that far away from each other and are mostly intellegible? I mean, I can understand it for Germany, because as the other guy said a Bavarian wouldn't understand a Frisian and High German is somewhere in the middle of both dialects, but for Switzerland that doesn't really make sense. Maybe it's to be able to understand Germans and Austrians for easier trading/business relations?
@@saschabaer3327 Plattdeutsch is to my knowledge still further up north. Bremen, Wilhelmshafen, that area. We still have some non-High German dialect down here, but it got diluted at the mass migration after WW2. My grandpa from my mother's side is from Silesia, but the rest of the family is from around here. Table-Football is "Krökeln" for us and children are "Lüttje". But these remaining dialect artifacts are dying out.
This has been very educational! When hearing people say “aks” instead of “ask” it has annoyed me to the same level as when people say “pacifically” 😂 now that I have learned the history behind this, I can hopefully let go of this annoyance!
Lazy and uneducated use of language (whether intentional or otherwise) is a detriment to everyone but particularly for the speaker. Please continue to be annoyed by people who fail to learn and enunciate correctly, our ability to understand one another depends on it!
I have sincerely never been so intrigued by pronunciation history as I have once I started watching your educational videos. Thank you so much for your insight on why we say words the way we say them
Thanks Dr Lindsey. Excellent explanation of aks. It reminded me of when I once lived in New Orleans. There was a popular song called, "They All Axed For You" by The Meters. The accent in New Orleans is quite unique.. non-rhotic, AAVE, Creole French. Locally, it's called the Yat accent, for "Where ya at?" (How are you?) It's all a glorious mess.
@@DrGeoffLindsey “Yat” is itself an accent, typically by white New Orleanians but also by some Black speakers. It's sometimes been described as “Brooklyn on Valium”. My Aunt is a native “Yat” speaker (she's spent her life in New Orleans), but my father (her brother) and her other sister don't speak that dialect.
Let the Good Times Roll! Laissez le bon temps rouler....spelling is wrong, I am sure. Louisiana is the only state where I heard older citizens still use Miss Diana, Miss Mary, etc. No "Ms. " allowed!!
To me, it always sounded like y'at, not two separate syllables. Where y'at? I am fine!! And WHY do Americans now answer, "How are you?" with "I'm good." ???????????? Good girl, good friend, good student, a good adjective, but what happened to the adverb??
Yeah that’s the first thing I think of when I hear about this, my (white) extended family in New Orleans. I can still hear aunt Angel telling her kids that “I *AXED* you a question!” or “I *AXED* you to come down here!”
Really appreciate this video. Helps to understand where the variations between different dialects come from and makes one question biases you have about people who utilize those dialects.
As an East African, I first noticed this form of pronunciation while living in the US for a some years. It appeared most commonly among African Americans, which confused me. I had never heard this form at home, or during my senior school years in South Africa. I take it from your fascinating and most informative talk that this form must have entered North America from West African slave-trade English, perhaps copied from the oral traditions of the sailors and the gang bosses. This would explain why it isn't commonly heard in English-speaking Africa itself, only among the African diaspora. Interesting.
it could also have developed seperately. There is a Gullah language professor, Sunn m'Cheaux, who's on UA-cam who I think talks about it in one of his shorts if you're interested in that.
@@DivineLightPaladin Remember, making facicious comments weakens your argument. I agree that women should be able to breastfeed in public, but implying there is no choice is simply false. Formula exists and it's more then adequate.
In the US “Aks” is looked down on simply because it’s typically associated with AAVE speakers and African Americans. Thanks (or Thansk?) for sharing the history of the pronunciation. Fascinating.
Thank you for this enlightening video. I must admit, I was one of those people who looked down on those who said aks instead of ask. I never knew it had linguistic origins beyond laziness. Thank you for opening my eyes and helping me to remember not to not look down on others, especially due to my own assumptions that I understand something even when I've done no research on it.
Here's a rule of thumb. If you think people do a thing because they are lazy. They don't Speech isn't easy to change your brain is wired how it is. If you've ever tried learning a second language you know it's difficult but let me tell you what's more difficult is getting rid of pronunciation habits you made while you were learning. Learning a new accent and dialect to live your entire life in is possibly harder than learning another language in my opinion
I've been meaning to ask for a video on this one. I've worked in rural areas of eastern Australia, and aks is extremely prevalent to the point that you can distinguish the locals (all who say aks) from the 'blow-ins'(who typically come from other regions). This might be a case of the theory of British/Scots/Irish influence, as historically, there has been a significant prevalence of missionary workers in the region and limited African influence.
An interesting study (?by Labov) showed that in the face of 'blow-ins', locals (the study centred on Martha's Vineyard) may exaggerate features of their dialect to distinguish themselves from the interlopers.
I'm an aussie from rural NSW. I say "arksed". I never noticed it until my friend from Adelaide constantly pointed it out that people from my area at uni all said "arksed".
I live in rural South Australia and my friend since childhood (and all her family) says aks(ed) and I picked up on it and told her and she never realised that she said it!
Very well put and informative. I've heard the word pronounced both ways but never heard an in-depth explanation. By far this is the best explanation of the word's origin i've ever heard.
This reminded me of something from childhood I had forgotten about: pronouncing the word "iron" like it is spelled ("i-run") and being corrected by friends ("no, it's i-earn or i-yearn"). I didn't believe them, but was surprised to find that the first dictionary I checked agreed with them. American standard English transposes those sounds so consistently that it was given as correct. I'd love to know if that's specifically American or if it's more generally true.
@@DrGeoffLindsey Huh! That's so interesting. I suppose people find it easier to pronounce. Goes to show that "can't you read a few letters correctly" is a bit nonsense, though.
@@KJ-td5gt in my south-east English accent this would be pronounced I-yearn I-yon, but lion is more of a lye-uhn if that makes sense? I love watching Dr Lindsey’s videos because it gives me so much to think about every-time hahaha Now on a day to day basis I notice things that I’m “mispronouncing” and get into discussions with my girlfriend about different pronunciations we grew up with which then leads onto the people we know that pronounce one way or the other! Edit: as I say “yearn” and “y-uhn” out loud it seems near identical. In my head they seem different but in actuality they’re the same.
@@KJ-td5gt Most accents I have heard in the UK pronounce the o in lion (and iron) as schwa (like in Jason), and the o in ion as o (like in icon). I have heard people pronounce ion the same as iron, but as you pointed out, that would get confusing if you need to tak about iron ions. Everyone I have heard speaking in a chemistry context has pronounced them differently, avoiding this problem.
Correction to up-loader. 08:40 He said "half-assed to research labs" and it's not taken from half-asked.' An ADZE is a woodworking tool that has been used for thousands of years. It is used to “finish” the surface of timber. So if you ordered a product from timber that was only finished on one side properly, as in the visible side, it was done half-adzed. Full adze would be both sides. Typically one side was not immediately visible , so you could get away with only finishing one side of the timber or "half-adzed". Only when the buyers of said timber recieved it home they would discover the job was done "half-assed" or half-adzed" Today of course half-assed means generally anything that was done half-hearted or in a lazy incomplete way. Funny enough an Adze does resemble a type of Axe. half-adze when pronounced correctly sounds like half-assed
Thank you for this. In New Zealand I have noticed more and more younger people saying "aks" recently. As a teacher I've always tried to get them to say "ask", not realising that it is, in fact, another correct form, albeit fairly rare here. I wonder where the influence comes from here, is it from television/movies/social media, or whether there is something about the Maori language/other Pasifika languages that has influenced in the same manner? Always good to learn new things.
This is almost certainly due to the influence of US media, in particular US hip hop culture, on young people in NZ. Recent surveys have shown many young New Zealanders watch little or no media content originating from NZ and have also documented a rise in children starting schools with detectable American accents due to the predominantly US media they have been exposed to from an early age.
@@DrGeoffLindsey further research might be needed but my impression is that it’s been a feature of (young person’s) Māori English for a very long time, predating the hip hop influences
@@nathangriffiths6218 How certain are you? As this video shows, it doesn't have to be from America. This feature isn't particularily prevalent in mainstream US media, as the pronounciation /aks/ is generally restricted to AAVE, which most Americans don't speak, as stated in the video. It's probably not a good idea to jump straight to a "US bad" -type argument when other arguments are plausible or even favourable. Metathesis is apparently quite common in NZE (Godzone dictionary, Max Cryer) and it's certainly not a rare feature cross-linguistically. Maori doesn't allow consonants syllable-finally and "aks" respects sonority hierarchy better than "ask", which plausibly is/was easier for native Maori speakers to pronounce.
6:59 -- in other words, he applied to be a news reader for the BBC, and when he was rejected, he swore to devote his life to the study of pronouncing things however you want
As a German, I've always associated aks with American Poc. Interesting to learn that it's also widespread in the UK and Ireland, but then again, I've never been to the Shetlands! 😺 (It's on my bucket list)
It mostly is laziness. It just so happens that black american is very much lazy english. Not sure why they do it. Blacks in hispanic cultures, especially carribbean did the same thimg tp spanish, very lazy spanish..... As for other ethnic americans....never heard them say AKS
I will admit, when I was younger, I used to be an "ask" snob when I was younger, but I've definitely changed over the years and appreciate the explanation.
It's funny, as a lifelong New Yorker, I've always associated "aks" with a Brooklyn or New Jersey dialect. I never imagined it would be common in the UK.
Very interesting. Back in the late 90s I took care of a white lady in her 60s who was from New York City and had what my colleagues and I in Seattle thought of as a thick "New York accent". She would say things like "can I AXE you a question?" and we thought it was funny.
Fantastic 😊 I've studied phonetics of English and love this content. I have heard 'aks' used in northeastern US but as you pointed out only among my black friends. I've wondered about this history, so thanks for the lesson!
None of these people speak this way know why they did, or do. They speak this way because they have not been taught the correct way. Humans speak so others understand, so being clear with your words has evolved over the centuries. Axe means something completely different to ask. That is all. It’s similar to names. People say my name means this or that when it just means “hey you”. But that doesn’t work with 7 billion people so your Jerry. The mental backflips 😅
Many thanks for this, Geoff! In my part of the world, it is common for people to say 'graps' instead of 'grasp', and I felt a little bit annoyed when it came from the pulpit! But we've all done the same thing for 'brid' and 'waps', haven't we?
I've always wondered why "axe" was used in my area of southern America but now I know. It's a good reminder that there may be a good reason for something you don't understand. Thanks for the video.
This was interesting. But to me, the most fascinating moment was the final screen, where Geoff Lindsey wrote "Click here to subscribe" in IPA characters representing his dialect of English, which is quite distinct from my own-General American with some Northeasternisms. That moment brought home to me the difficulty or impossibility of devising a common phonetic orthography for English. The varieties of English have drifted so far apart that the only orthography that can unite them is one that is not phonetic. Of course, the example of ask/ax and the range of vowels used with each variant demonstrates that too.
IMHO, English spelling is hard not because of the variety of accents and diverging pronunciations; it's hard because standard spelling and standard pronunciation don't match. It's as if in 300 years pronunciation changed back to "aks" but we kept spelling "ask" while indicating the standard pronunciation as /æks/.
Hi Dr Lindsey, I was wondering if you've ever encountered people pronouncing words such as "create" or "nuclear" like "curate" or "nucular" respectively - I've started noticing both of these recently and I was wondering if there's a similar reason behind both phenomena and/or if there are other examples (and also how that happens)? Thanks so much for your videos, they're always amazing
"Nucular" is very common, even from highly educated people and those in authority (George W. Bush was famous/notorious for saying it, but it's far more widespread than him). The key factor is that "nuclear" is a very unusual word in various ways, and many/most people don't make the connection with "nucleus". On the other hand, several common words end in "cular" (particular, circular etc.), including technical words like "molecular". And "nucular" is phonetically closer to "nuclear" than the spelling might suggest. What may seem odd to non-natives is that speakers would deviate from the spelling in this way, but of course natives have been accustomed all their lives to weird and random spellings.
@@DrGeoffLindsey And George W. Bush was not the only president who mispronounced "nuclear". Although he corrected it later in life, Jimmy Carter (who was trained in nuclear power plants on US sub in the Navy) had the strangest pronunciation of "nuclear" I have ever heard. ua-cam.com/video/wHdl_0q-F60/v-deo.html
@@DrGeoffLindsey To me it sounds like 'Noo-killer', and it vexes me when I hear people pronounce it that way. I often say "can you say 'new'? "can you say 'clear'? .... then yuou should be able to say newclear as one word!
@@Drobium77 to me, nuclear and new clear are pronounced differently. 3 syllable nu•cle•ar vs 2 syllable new•clear. this might be influenced by the 3 syllable nu•cu•lar but idk
Very interesting topic. I become aware of this variety when I was studying different varieties of English and found a video of a teacher being praised for "teaching" Black people how to "properly" pronounce the word.
Very true about that bit with “asked”! I noticed awhile ago when helping a Japanese friend learn English that I always pronounce the past tense as /æst/, as /æskt/ is actually quite difficult to say
Thank you for the fact-based, non-judgmental, non-racist, non-any-ist explanation. I must say I have judged the pronunciation in the past and will never do so again.
@@sebastienh1100 The rules of language are only useful insofar as they facilitate communication between people. Don't tell me you have ever been confused about someone's use of the pronounciation "axe" in place of "ask". Think about it. You know precisely what they mean when they say axe, so the communication was successful. You're just upset that they don't follow what you perceive to be "The Rules" of language, which, as a matter of fact, don't exist in such a rigid and inflexible state save for within your own mind.
@@sebastienh1100 How hypocritical that you claim to love language while uselessly railing against the natural process which lead to the beautiful variety of language we know today. You don't actually love any of those things, you just hate change for hatred's sake.
@@kingcrimson4133 - you, then, love change for the sake of change, which is the stupidest way of looking at life and civilization (except when you are a teenager under hormonal pressure)
When I was working in the hospitals in downtown, Kingston, Jamaica, depending on where the patients were from, or the coworkers,AKS was common but so was DEKS “Haks at de deks” and I heard children using words like moksito. I am not a native English speakers. I never had issues with it, and I enjoyed all the different ways of speaking I encountered there, pronunciation, and grammar wise.
My best friend is from Louisiana and she pronounces ask as /æks/, despite her being white. From my understanding, having also lived in Southern Louisiana, it's pretty common to hear that pronunciation regardless of race, but it's pretty uncommon in most other Southern accents (aside from AAVE, of course). My accent is more Texan (DFW) than anything else, so I pronounce is more like /æːsk/, if I pronounce the /k/ at all.
After learning English language at A Level it has really opened my eyes to variations of english and how they come about. Still, i found this video really informative and entertaining!
This is a great little UA-cam channel. It’s so refreshing to hear academic scholarship escape the academy and communicate more widely. I bet your colleagues are both in awe and probably a little jealous. Not that it is likely to be considered a significant contribution to the field. If you were Stormzy maybe…
This is interesting. Here in New Zealand, in my experiences living a heavily multicultural city, Māori and Pacific Islanders use “aks”, and they are looked down on for using it.
As a kid living in Australia, a neighbour of ours, would say, “arksed”… yet her brother and sister will pronounce it, “asked”. It was put down to her being lazy, by parents and teachers… almost like a speech impediment
Do you know how hard it is to change your natural speech ALL THE TIME? It is exhausting. There's nothing lazy about it and why would you spend so much effort "correcting" a thing that literally everybody understands anyway?
@@micayahritchie7158 Because it is incorrect. That's why. I remember mispronouncing things as a kid and being told to pronounce them properly. It only took a bit of practise to get it right and to make the former mispronouncing feel awkward and wrong to say. We can't make excuses for it instead.
Very interesting video! And I had to laugh at the end when you added people saying “couldn’t be asked” instead of “couldn’t be arsed”. I lived in England for a good while thinking people actually said “I couldn’t be asked to do xyz”. It was only when I wrote it in a text message my boyfriend corrected me, saying it’s obviously not asked but arsed. Thanks for confirming that he actually does say asked 😜 (It made complete sense to me at the time that people would say asked.. like: “nobody can ask me to do this” was simply shortened to “I can’t be asked” 😂)
I'm used to considering it as a related expression to "put your back into it" and half-arsed as a half effort. If you're physically pushing or pulling, you really should be using both cheeks.
Another fun detail to this. The presence of the Aks form is likely the main reason why Ask still exists to begin with! All old english words with sc underwent a sound change, that resulted in them being pronounced like modern "sh", flesh was once flǣsċ. It's likely that if Aks never existed, modern day ask, would instead be "Ash".
I often wondered about the sk, when I learnt English. First, I just thought it must have been (re)introduced via Old Norse, knowing, that OE ǣsċian never developed into *ash, though, considering the early attested metathesis sc > cs (ǣcsian), it's plausible, because of the ever interchanging use of both forms, the sc withstood the palatalization. The High German cousin of OE ǣsċian is the now dated "heischen" as in erheischen (to request, to demand) the prothetic h is a comparatively young feature that got attached during the late MHG period (influenced by heizzen), the actual form "eischen" (OHG eiscôn) became obsolete and has always been rivaled by frâgên.
Do you have insight into why this change, which you implied was systematic, wouldn’t have applied to “flask”? Wiktionary indicates it also has Germanic roots. (It also indicates it went from Frankish to Medieval Latin back to Old English; maybe this change didn’t happen in Latin whereas it happened in some Germanic languages, and the borrowing back into this particular era of OE postdated the shift and the final-/sk/ cluster was still licit?)
@@masonm9823 The OED indicates that the Old English "flasce" (often "flaxe") had disappeared from the language by the time of Middle English. The word was later re-entered Modern English when it was borrowed from the French "flasque" in the 16th century, long after the sk→sh change occurred. (The ultimate origin of the word is murky. Variations of the word are found in most Romance and Germanic languages; it's unclear whether it began as a Late Latin word borrowed into Germanic or vice-versa. Or it might come from an older PIE root; several possible derivations have been proposed.)
You're a bit wrong here unfortunately. During the Old English period, flǣsc and many other words with 'sc' were already pronounced with the same sound as modern 'sh', whereas some words like āscian were pronounced like modern 'sk'. Ask wouldn't have become 'ash' even if 'aks' had never existed
Much of the difference in regional pronunciation just comes down to the different evolution of pronunciation in largely isolated communities, both here and in other countries. Also, when learning a new language, people often use sound-forms in their first language to say words in their second and subsequent languages, and if they still make themselves understood reasonably unambiguously I don't see how that is a problem. The first time I worked in a new startup in London, I had some difficulty with understanding the pronounciation of some of the workers there, but it didn't take long for my brain to adjust to what was just unfamiliar. These days of course with global media, we have exposure to people from all over the world, so I would imagine the problems an old fart like me has are less of a problem for the younger generation and will be less so for those in the future.
This has been bothering me for years. Finally! Someone who can educate me in a respectful manner, without judging me for not having known, or looking at me like I'm full of judgment myself. I'm so glad I have subscribed to you channel! 👍 👍
@@jonthibault5509 You happen to be incorrect. But let me ask you: Why judge my gender or class to begin with? You want to guess where I live, too? How is it relevant here, other than your preconceived notion of who I am, based solely on your uncalled-for judgements of me?
Interesting. Metathesis in constanantcluster -sp wesp/weps (wasp), rasp/raps (rasp) is quite widespread in Dutch and often viewed negatively in a similar manner, despite, in the case of wesp/weps, the -ps variety actually being found in written sources before the -sp variant. (uuapces, 8th century).
Very interesting. I admit I've been a bit snobbish about aks myself. But you'll hear it all over Ireland. Along with "amn't" for "I'm notc (Shakespearean, I believe, though I may be wrong about that). Also,"I'm after cutting my hand", a literal translation from Irish.
I must admit, I thought the expression "can't be arsed" was "can't be asked" for about 20 years! I guess that's just how I first saw it written down. I used to think the people writing "can't be arsed" were reanalysing it til I realised "can't be asked" doesn't really make much sense either. Come to think of it, I think writing it as "asked" might be some sort of written version of a minced oath which is why it's often written like that.
Agreed. To be snobby and prescriptive about peoples' use of language is to dedicate yourself in opposition to the quite natural and harmless force of linguistic evolution. It's like finding a stream in the woods and dedicating yourself to halting its flow, simply because you have a strong (yet incorrect) conviction that water ought to always be still.
This is an excellent video! From context, I figured out the phrase "I can't be arsed." to be some British way to say "I can't be bothered." or "I don't care." It didn't occur to me that it was "I can't be ASKED." That makes so much more sense! LOL! This channel is great. Subscribed!
I don't think "half-asked" has historical usage. I've only seen "half-assed" been used and it seems like the accepted etymology is a humorous mispronunciation of "haphazard"
@@Roteberht35 It's not that "half-asked" is used, it's that transcription software can't tell the difference between "half-assed" and "half-asked" because it was trained on English speakers who slur the word "asked" by itself so often.
@@Roteberht35 you're actually correct in assuming what I thought about that bit. In retrospect the last bit is a little unclear in its purpose considering that I've checked the etymologies now...
My grandmother, of Italian descent, born in the USA in 1911, used the pronunciation "AXE" instead of ask. She also said "HAKE" instead of hate. As long as I understand what a person is saying, that all that matters to me.
6:40 I think I'm more or less on the same page as this lady. English isn't my first language, but it drives me nuts when I hear people say "aks". I also think my perception of speech and association with dialects makes it far too easy for me to perceive people differently based on the way they talk. I know that is not a good thing, so I'm glad you pointed this out on the end part there, because I need that reminder.
I had noticed the ethnic divide where aks was more prominent but I didn't know the full story until now. Have you done a video on the origin and correct use of can't be arsed/asked?
Pretty sure it's at least partially from/related to 'can't be bothered' and connected in some way to 'bothered' being used as a more polite alternative to ... other terms. Such as 'sheep botherer'. And if there's not a connection to something being 'half arsed' I'd be surprised... But then, English is full of things that look like they should make sense in such a way but, in reality, really really don't, so who knows?
Hi Dr Geoff Lindsey, your channel is captivating! I am hooked on your videos. I appreciate that your explanations of forms and dialect are without judgement. I was raised in North East London and I have had my accent looked down upon many times. I have now untaught myself "ARKS" and now try to say "arsk" lol! Thank you.
I love these kinda videos! In my teens and early 20s I definitely was a bit of a 'grammar nazi', but ironically me correcting others because i thought I knew better was back during a time when I knew very little. These days I absolutely love the variation in both spoken English and written, it's so interesting to see how it develops, and where things come from, and the variations just get even more interesting when you take into consideration social and economic backgrounds. Absolutely adore this channel for not belittling different uses of the language, but just explaining where things come from :D This is good info for me to have next time i hear someone mocking the use of aks. (unsurprisingly i tend to find there's some underlying racism behind mocking words like that in particular)
@@Pasta_watcher I'm sorry that you're going through some tough times right now. I hope your life improves. Know that you matter and your life is important.
Something this video made me realize is that not only do I usually say "assed" when I speak, but if I try to put emphasis on the 'sk' to say "asked", I usually slip up and say "aksed" instead. That's really interesting to me.
I heard the Geordie joke , 'I would have aksed her , but I didn't have an axe.', a lot when I was young. But it was a minority of people who used that form.
Really, thanks! It seems like 'ax/aks' has been used as a non-standard form all over Britain, but has declined recently. I think this makes it all the more likely that West Indians and African Americans simply got it directly from the old world.
@@nickallen2071 Aks was indeed accepted as normal. I was born in Newcastle, and although Pitmatic was spoken less than 20 miles away , I struggle to understand it.
I had _no_ idea! I thought that people who say "aks" just couldn't pronounce or didn't hear the word as "ask". That settles it! I've watched a few of your videos before and UA-cam recommends them to me, but I'm subscribing now for fear of missing important info like this. I've been looking down on people who say "aks" ever since I first hear someone say it that was and I regret that sincerely now.
I used to get really bothered by different pronunciations ever since one day my dad randomly started saying frustrated as “fustrated” and drawer as “draw” (normally in my area we say it rhyming with the most common American pronunciation of door), which I had never heard him say before and he insisted he’d always said them that way, but I knew I had heard him say those words in the way I would consider proper before, so it bugged me every time he would say them. Then I became aware of the ask/aks thing, and I first noticed it being said by classmates that I perceived to be rich white kids, so I had no idea there was a race or class association with it and figured it was just that they weren’t very bright and never outgrew a childish pronunciation. Then I learned that there was a race association, so even though hearing it felt like nails on a chalkboard, I never let that show (not that it bothered me enough to show it before knowing that anyway). But then as an adult, I learned that language isn’t a prescriptive set of rules like I had been told in school, so I’ve been making a conscious effort ever since then to not just tolerate hearing words I consider wrong, but to actually get over being bothered by them. I’ve definitely made a lot of progress on it, but now when I talk to my dad, instead of being bothered by him saying “fustrated”, I’m bothered by him complaining about people saying “aks”.
Meanwhile in plenty of cases, I don’t even pronounce the k. Here’s what I say in these sentences: Can I ask you a question - ask You already asked me three - asst or ass No, I only asked you two - assd or asst Go ask Jim - ass (sometimes I move my mouth into a k shape but don’t make a sound) I already asked him - asst or assd Then why are you asking me - ask He told me to ask someone else - ass
Language is BOTH descriptive AND descriptive. Without parents correcting their kids and professors correcting their students, we would not have been able to read what our great grandparents wrote, let alone Shakespeare.
sure but imagine he said farxated. Thinking it was big and clever. one of the reasons people hate ARX is because it has an undertone of insulence. Just like itwould if a white man said ARX to a black man in a crowd of white men or white women
Fascinating. An episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" on TV once made "fun" out of Raymond's habitual "aks" even though he was trying to say "ask". It was positioned as some kind of speech impediment but I suspect that the writers had no idea of its derivations - and neither did I until now. I had it in the same camp as what I believe to be a trait inherited by children based on the way their parents speak, for example, of saying "somethink" or "somethin'", but it is NOT a South London dialect as claimed by a UK female TV football pundit who habitually drops her g on ing endings. I am from South London, and nobody I knew spoke like that. But I do know some Welsh who do. I dated a very beautiful girl in my early 20s who said "somethink" and I'm afraid it put me off her in the end. Maybe, subconsciously, I couldn't bear the idea of our children saying that. Who knows! I'm no linguist but I find this sort of thing interesting, and have been reading Bill Bryson's impressive (to me) books on the history of English and on the separate path that American English took. By the way, spellcheck makes it bloody hard to write this stuff - it keeps "correcting" things that I don't want corrected!
The ending with the captioning generously replacing arsed with asked had me laughing! When I was young I thought this was a "lazy American" thing because I remember hearing my mostly-white neighbors in Chicago area saying it. They were probably influenced by AAVE and/or Appalachian relatives (come to think of it, one of them may be a cousin who had West Virginian roots). I love how this channel is broadening my mind about how my early biased thinking that there was a correct way to pronounce English words is entirely wrong.
Aks drives me bonkers! But I appreciate the non-biased info about where it came from. I will remind myself of this the next time I hear someone say it. I also appreicate the reminder that I say "ass" or "assed", which sounds worse when I really think about it. 🤦♀️
I’m a native speaker but I rarely use “Asked” or “Asks”, I use “Ask” in place of either word. How interesting all our different variations and dialects!
@@CptDangernoodle People say the same thing about aks. I'm sure the original commenter is not the only one in their area who uses ask in place of asks and asked. It is probably a regional variation. From a linguist's perspective, there isn't a right or wrong way to speak, there's just the ways that people do speak. Some people say assed instead of asked, some people say aksed instead of asked, and some people say ask instead of asked. There's nothing wrong with any of the ways people say it. If a person spoke and the listener understood, then that was a correct use of language
It's sort of there in the old Lincolnshire dialect as well. I remember the old farmers dropping the s and some having the long a, so it was more "ak" or "aak".
My mom studied English in college and one of the things she taught me growing up was that you should never look down on someone for the way they talk, due to complex grammatical and linguistic histories
Yes but if they attack in gangs its ok to hate bad people
@@daveh4925I agree those dirty english poppy munching nazis always attack in groups but alone they won't even look in your eyes
lemme ax you something
@@daveh4925 LOL! Oh I wanna see you argue over grammatical issues when attacked by a gang of people with poor english grammar. … Hey did I discover an interesting pun here? "Poor english grammar" is the opposite of "pure english grammar".
Why not?
Here in India, my college teacher once spent a whole lecture talking about data structure and memory allocation where she spoke "hard disks" as "hard dikss" for at least a dozen times. My friends had some very good moments back then.
That reminds me of the time in my coding bootcamp a few of us were snickering while the lecturer was discussing database "sharding" and kept saying the word indistinguishable to us in its various forms: "sharting," "shart," "sharted," "sharts."
I hear #&$@hub has petabytes worth of hard disks...
I've had teachers pronounced "and" like "aand" and "as" like "arse"
@@waldolemmer LMAO
@@rohitchaoji pronouncing schwa is very prominent in Indic languages, it is the default vowel in the abugida. Without it the whole language would break down. People usually prefer it when speaking English as well.
I'm embarrassed to say that I've judged people rather harshly for saying "aks" in the past with not a single thought for the shortcuts and technical mispronunciations in my own speech. It's a brilliant channel that challenges biases in good faith without putting anyone down.
Growth, my friend. You are doing it.
We all have biases, and judge people by their speech. Even when you know that people in different places speak differently, you judge their intelligence by how they talk. I do it, too. I'm from the American South, but I still think Southern accents sound dumb. I know better. Still...
The difference is standardized “mispronunciations” for the sake of brevity or clarity, versus ignorant mispronunciations. It still matters. I dislike these videos that try to lump everything into one category.
AKS is definitely ignorant in all but the rarest historical cases.
If people want to say AKS, they should spell it that way. It's an ignorant mispronunciation otherwise. I'm not at all embarrassed to say that I judge people for such things. I don't like reading comments that require me to mentally translate there/their/they're into the proper meaning, either. You bet your sweet 'aks' I judge them.
@@DisgruntledPigumon how is it at all ignorant? It's widely used, and just as easily understood. Language changes with the people who speak it, as long as your meaning is understood, that's really all that matters
In South Africa I had an economics professor who constantly spoke about the importance of “data mining” or “data mine”. Towards the end of the semester I finally worked out that he was saying “determine” or “determining”. I thought he just really liked working with data… All my notes made a lot more sense once I understood this 😅
I had a South Asian math teacher in middle school. I had a hard time figuring out the accent. One monday, I left my math book at home as we started a new chapter. The teacher kept referring to "people" throughout the lesson and I was totally lost. When I got home and turned to the page for the homework I realized that the lesson was on percentages. And the teacher was NOT referring to "thirty-two PER-son" but "32%".
currently in university and had that problem for the last 2 years. I have to actually decipher the words what my lectureres are saying coz of the accent difference.
I had this with a french client. He would ask 'how do you data-mine the coefficients in the model?' and I would say things like 'no, no the model is not data-mined' (because data mining is pejorative in investment applications). Eventually we figured it out - he was not insulting us.
That’s hilarious 😂 was he from Durban by any chance? The Afrikaans accent there is so strong
I had friend who copied notes off the board. He would frequently copy the small sigma simbol down (\sigma) to later realize it was the digit 6!
EXPLANATION OF ENDING: "Asked" is so often pronounced exactly like "assed"/"arsed" that UA-cam'S AUTO CAPTIONING can't tell them apart. So when people say "half assed" or "can't be arsed", it sometimes captions this as "asked". I should have made this clearer.
I think you'll find its mainly black people say it and not people in general
Ummmmm... Nice try. The whole point of that section was to show how people pronounce "ask" in different ways.
I've always wandered why this term is so prevalent among 'black' 'biracial' Asian, Arab and White living in urban areas of the UK, talking with a exaggerated blaccent.
@@davescibb Not really. You'd be surprised how many white, Asian, Arab, Gypsy, Jewish people use the term in many urban areas across the UK.
To be honest, I always thought it was a deliberate affectation. Thanks for the info.
As a Jamaican myself I believe that it’s mostly from old English. Most of our creole especially in the rural areas that didn’t get urbanized through media m. You’ll hear most of the old words, perfect example my younger sister that grew up on Disney was watching Bridgeton today and heard them say “ Make haste” and realize that it’s the same as the creole “mekase” that we use in the same context but is no longer a common part of speech bcuz it’s been replaced with simply “ hurry up”
However you’ll find that a lot of Jamaicans (esp older folks) would use “mekase” rather than hurry up.
That's fascinating!
Yes quite correct. I made this point on here months ago and got precisely 0 upvotes but there we go.
Would the expected form not be mekies? Or is that how what you spell "mekase" is pronounced? Because if not, I think the two expressions might not be cognates.
@@maxkho00 yea it’s just the spelling but the way u typed it would be the pronunciation
Amazing! As a young man (24) growing up in the United States, I always associated "aks" with AAVE. I had no idea it had such a rich history! It's a bit sad that there is such a big stigma towards speakers who prefer "aks" and other similar "non-standard" forms of words, because that's simply how languages evolve! Great video Dr. Lindsey!
Edit: Sorry folks, I never meant to imply that AAVE doesn’t have a rich history of its own, or that I only now think it’s acceptable to say “aks” now that I have learned that its history is not connected with AAVE. I think AAVE is a fascinating variety of English, and I love all non-standard forms, regardless of their origin.
I've heard a Jamaican person use it.
Is this a case of something that flips as aksed is easier to say? The drawback is it will be indistinguishable from axed.
I think saying asterix is more common than asterisk because that requires more care. I presume that's not a common enough word to be dialectical variation.
Yeah, Africans definitely took their pronunciation from Chaucer lmao.
@@cockoffgewgle4993 I've only hear African-Americans use that term.
@@dianep1385 And English Africans now evidently. This video is woke nonsense. Everyone knows it's black speak. Any historical usage in England is a coincidence.
I had put "aks" into the "dialectic variation" category but I didn't realise it went *_that_* far back.
The ending was hysterical, watching the auto captioner trying to make sense of "can't be arsed".
I thought it was just koz it was easier to pronunce
Fascinating. Many years ago, in a linguistics class the professor explained, for African Americans who use aks for ask, the pronunciation was from West Africa and it arrived during the slave trade. I had never heard that aks was in Chaucer or Old English. I hope it is included in the curriculum today.
Perhaps, but they are born and raised in the US. We all had to learn to speak differently from our immigrant families.
0:00 Introduction
0:44 'Aks' in Old English
1:30 'Aks' in Middle English
1:57 'Aks' in the Bible
2:44 'Aks' in the Shetland Islands
3:44 'Aks' in Jamaica & MLE
5:28 'Aks' in the USA & AAVE
6:10 Stereotyping & prejudice
7:50 'Ask' pronounced as 'ass' & 'arse'!
8:42 isn't he actually saying "assed"? "half-assed" is a common phrase.
Thanks! I has always wondered about that, didn't reaiize it was so complicated.
Axe and ye shall receive ... for he who axeth get choppeteth
@@vibaj16 yes, most of those last examples were wrong.
@@carlborg8023some the examples at the end were just demonstrating how the captions interpreted "ass" or "arse" as "ask", rather than showing people pronouncing "ask" that way.
"Mix" is another example of metathesis. The past participle of the Latin verb "miscere" is "mixtus." We still put the S before the C in "miscellaneous," but pretty much every variation on the original Latin infinitive is pronounced "mix."
I had never realised mix and miscellanious are from the same root
examples of metathesis should be taught early on in english lessons so kids don't grow up with these biases.
then again, it seems like english teachers themselves love to be nitpicky fools to begin with eh...
+
funnily enough, ‘wasp’ is also a result of metathesis! in Old English there are attestations of both wæps and wæsp, and the -ps form persisted until EME as far as i can tell.
what’s even more curious is that this seems to have happened to a lot of other Germanic languages (see Dutch wesp, German Wespe, etc) and even other IE languages (like Latin vespa). kinda funny how nowadays people think -sp is hard to pronounce whereas thousands of years ago -sp is the easier/more favored variant :p
Metathesis is an "intregal" part of language evolution.
The Chaucer example with both forms in the same sentence was fascinating
There might be a difference even. Axe meaning ask a a question, while Ask means to desire.
What I love about your videos is the fundemental acceptance that language moves on and changes, a constant reflection of our thoughts rather than a "correct" form
AXing people questions is de-evolution, not moving on.
@@anonamatron Yeah, you have no idea how language works
@@chameleonedm I know the majority of people who use it speak in a way based on lack of education (which was not their fault in previous generations) and ignorance.
@@anonamatron Lol not even close, it's like you didn't even watch the video. You just seem to think that black = uneducated which is pretty abhorrent
"moves on and changes"
You mean it degenerates.
My grandmother was born in Lancashire in 1897 and lived in the county all her life. She always said ‘axe’ and it’s still very frequently heard there today. It’s a common feature of Lancashire dialect poems.
Really, thanks! It seems like 'ax/aks' has been used as a non-standard form all over Britain, though it's declined drastically recently. If you know of a poem where it's used and have a moment, perhaps you could let me know? drgeofflindsey@gmail.com
I was born and raised in Lancashire and never heard “aks” as “ask” my whole life there. Granted, I heard a lot of phrases that would really have my fellow Yanks scratching their heads in puzzlement. But, let’s face it; people should know better. There is English, and there are mistakes.
@@julianwild8556, it may depend upon which part of Lancashire you were brought up in. I was brought up in Bolton and never came across the use of ax/aks until I moved to the more diverse area of Warrington right down in the south of old Lancashire.
@@julianwild8556 You are misinformed. English is pluricentric; it has several standards, and several dialects within those standards. An American spelling 'colour' as "color" or pronouncing 'car' with a hard 'r', is not making mistakes (as much as it may grate on commonwealth citizens such as myself); they're writing/speaking a standard form of North American English.
Never heard “ax” in Lancashire either, though a quick visit to London had many people ax-ing me questions!
I confess I had just assumed it was a modern affectation but it's really fascinating to see how fragments of old English persist and reappear in different contexts.
It IS a modern affectation for some. I've definitely seen people switch from ask to aks bc they thought it sounded cool
@@Nakia11798 Yup.
@@Nakia11798 I've lived in Australia for 35 years and all that time I've heard it used, especially by bogans. Maybe Londoners picked it up from Neighbours or Home and Away!
Yeah, your average uneducated citizen isn't using it that way due to historical reasons. They're just so poorly educated they can't speak their native language correctly.
Some white women say "aksed" because they think it makes them cute.
If this has done nothing more than equip me with the words, 'It's in Chaucer and the first English Bibles,' then it is a great video. Knowing the roots and possible roots of the current usage gives me pause to think too, and so it is even better. Thank you.
It's in quite a different form there and seems unrelated to the modern "stomzy" version which really makes a feature of it. The older variant seems to just be a slight pronouciation change, while this modern style is a different word.
It's really disingenuous to relate it back to those older sources.
@@Theduckwebcomics I find it infuriating that you wrote all of that just to show you didn't watch the video or at least pay attention to it. The audacity to cling to your bigotry when an expert on the English language so freely posted this educational material.
Do you think you know better or are you just daft?
@@TheduckwebcomicsAgree, "disingenuous" is a good characterization of this.
As a non-native speaker I’ve never noticed this phenomenon. I wouldn’t have even noticed it if you hadn’t slowed it down. Thank you for making our ears more attentive!
I’ve only ever heard it from black americans and some black brits.
@@SvobodovaEva There's definitely white American celebrities who do this too. I can't immediately think of a name though...
@@belgianvanbeethoven Joe Pesci comes to mind
@@SvobodovaEva I mostly notice it when I’m down visiting extended family in New Orleans. They’re white and they always use this pronunciation, though it’s a little bit less pronounced behind the southern drawl.
I had not noticed that people say "assed".
In a past job I had a Nigerian colleague who said "aks" and figured it was down to some influence from his native language/dialect. One of the computer programmes we used was referred to by the acronym "Wasp" which he pronounced "Waps", which I thought strengthened my theory.
So to hear about the numerous other layers to it is fascinating!
Edit for missing pertinent detail: the job was in South East London.
Fun fact: the word "wasp" was originally "waps". You can see it both in Middle English texts, and in other Germanic languages (wesp, Wespe, hvespe).
@@vytah How do these examples demonstrate the existence of “waps”?
@@masonm9823 In southern German dialects, the word "wepsig" exists. It refers to (annoying) hyperactive behaviour, like you might associate with wasps.
Also some of these dialects call a wasp ("Wespe" in Standard German) "Weps"
@@masonm9823 They don't seem to. However, in my native German dialect (Bavarian), the standard German 'Wespe' is in fact 'Weps'. It's always fascinating to see how dialects preserve forms which have been gone from the dominant version of a language for hundreds of years.
@@masonm9823 They don't, but for the sake of brevity I omitted that Middle English had all three of waspe, wasp and waps, and Proto-West-Germanic had wapsu.
Definitely a stigma in the US around axe/axed instead of ask/asked. As you said, strongly associated with black Americans and the idea of their speech being wrong or uneducated or something other.
Yeah I am not buying this explanation of the origin… it may coincidentally be true but it’s nearly universally African Americans ( and the under educated at that ) that say this in America. To me it’s just a linguistic quirk that has managed to stay alive because of pockets of small populations that allow it to persist.
Like regional nouns and verbs … ( my region in the Midwest annoyingly has people who say “red up the table” instead of “set the table” for example )
The example of the scientist is wrong. He is not mispronouncing “half asked”. He is using the slang term “half assed”, which means un-prepared. American slang.
@@lewjames6688 - he's showing a reverse example where the person is in fact saying assed and the text transcription is showing asked instead. No one thinks "half asked" is a thing.
@@marqetteliz I'm not sure about that. He's a Brit and not an American, so his usage of American argot/slang might just be off the mark. At least if you aks me... LOL.
I've read that this particular pronunciation came from Southwest England with slave owners first to Barbados and then with their younger sons to the deep South.
I love your videos so much. I'm a native English speaker and yet every time I watch I learn not only completely new information, but new understanding into my native language.
Haven't watched the video yet, but I sincerely hope it includes that clip from Futurama where Leela explains that in the year 3000, "Aks" is now the regular pronunciation of the word, correcting Fry's pronunciation of "Ask".
unfortunately no. but it's great this video is posted not too long before /eksməs/
It's called Idiocracy.
@@jonthibault5509 it's called weird language evolution
I was hoping for that clip as well. Sadly, a missed opportunity.
Its usage is actually dying out. People don't deliberately try to sound ignorant, it's only used by less educated people.
In the Chicagoland area, in the 1970s, I was talking with a woman who was cleaning our house. I summarized a radio report of a murdering husband by saying, “A man axed his wife”. She understood this through an AAVE filter, and responded, “What did he aks her?” Your explanation gives me a greater appreciation of the issues involved in my memory from 50 years ago.
Horribly violent crime, axe is most commonly understood as ask, yep that's Chicago all right
@H. Fritz You need to learn that slavery means ownership of a person as property, presumably including forced labor and no pay. Slavery has absolutely no relation to the situation that I described.
@H. Fritz the profession of housekeeping that provides many people with employment is in fact slavery?
Isn't it because they have 75 IQ?
@@HFritz-kp8ioSo I can employ someone to clean/detail inside my car, but if I pay someone the same (or probably better) hourly rate to clean my house then it's slavery? Grow up.
I find these intertwinings between historical versions of words, native dialects and foreign accents fascinating. Here in Germany we also have lots of regional dialects and most people recognize that it would be silly to try and force local pronounciations onto each other. But it also shows the importance of a standardized written language in a united nation.
I come from Hannover and I have the pleasure that our local dialect supplied most of what today is considered High German. Basically we already speak the "default" German as our native dialect, kind of comparable to how people learn Oxford English in school. But if a Bavarian was meeting up with a Frisian and both would speak their native dialect, they would barely be able to understand each other. So the most prevelant use of High German is as a bridge between different dialects. One reason more to consistently use it writing. Some Bavarian friends of mine use a written form of their dialect and I can barely understand what they are saying.
That’s actually not entirely accurate. The local dialect of Hannover used to be Low German (Plattdeutsch) but that dialect essentially died out and got more thoroughly replaced with Standard German than in some other areas. Standard German is literally eating up dialectal variation (enforcing Standard German in schools did a lot to kill off formerly thriving dialects, especially). -Sincerely, a disgruntled Swiss person who was forced to speak a foreign language daily for 12 years, writing in yet another foreign language
@@saschabaer3327 Do you know why it was decided to teach High German in school when I assume the Swiss German dialects aren't that far away from each other and are mostly intellegible? I mean, I can understand it for Germany, because as the other guy said a Bavarian wouldn't understand a Frisian and High German is somewhere in the middle of both dialects, but for Switzerland that doesn't really make sense. Maybe it's to be able to understand Germans and Austrians for easier trading/business relations?
@@saschabaer3327 Plattdeutsch is to my knowledge still further up north. Bremen, Wilhelmshafen, that area. We still have some non-High German dialect down here, but it got diluted at the mass migration after WW2. My grandpa from my mother's side is from Silesia, but the rest of the family is from around here.
Table-Football is "Krökeln" for us and children are "Lüttje". But these remaining dialect artifacts are dying out.
There's even boarisch wiki 😂
@@candyjaywee I thought Boars spoke Afrikaans. Or maybe it's Pig Latin.
This has been very educational! When hearing people say “aks” instead of “ask” it has annoyed me to the same level as when people say “pacifically” 😂 now that I have learned the history behind this, I can hopefully let go of this annoyance!
Lazy and uneducated use of language (whether intentional or otherwise) is a detriment to everyone but particularly for the speaker. Please continue to be annoyed by people who fail to learn and enunciate correctly, our ability to understand one another depends on it!
@@r8chlletters you mean "enunciate"
What about Ex-cape when saying Escape?
Willful ignorance is like nails on a chalkboard.
Nah - it means someone doesn't read.... you'd say it "correctly" if you read "a.s.k." 1000 times!
I have sincerely never been so intrigued by pronunciation history as I have once I started watching your educational videos.
Thank you so much for your insight on why we say words the way we say them
Content we didn’t know we needed. Thanks, Dr. Lindsey, for answering our half-asked questions
Thanks Dr Lindsey. Excellent explanation of aks. It reminded me of when I once lived in New Orleans. There was a popular song called, "They All Axed For You" by The Meters. The accent in New Orleans is quite unique.. non-rhotic, AAVE, Creole French. Locally, it's called the Yat accent, for "Where ya at?" (How are you?) It's all a glorious mess.
Thanks! Is Yat used by different ethnicities?
@@DrGeoffLindsey “Yat” is itself an accent, typically by white New Orleanians but also by some Black speakers. It's sometimes been described as “Brooklyn on Valium”. My Aunt is a native “Yat” speaker (she's spent her life in New Orleans), but my father (her brother) and her other sister don't speak that dialect.
Let the Good Times Roll! Laissez le bon temps rouler....spelling is wrong, I am sure. Louisiana is the only state where I heard older citizens still use Miss Diana, Miss Mary, etc. No "Ms. " allowed!!
To me, it always sounded like y'at, not two separate syllables. Where y'at? I am fine!! And WHY do Americans now answer, "How are you?" with "I'm good." ???????????? Good girl, good friend, good student, a good adjective, but what happened to the adverb??
Yeah that’s the first thing I think of when I hear about this, my (white) extended family in New Orleans. I can still hear aunt Angel telling her kids that “I *AXED* you a question!” or “I *AXED* you to come down here!”
Really appreciate this video. Helps to understand where the variations between different dialects come from and makes one question biases you have about people who utilize those dialects.
I just refreshed the page and saw you hit 100k subscribers! Congratulations, you truly deserve it and more!
Thanks so much, to you and all my viewers!
As an East African, I first noticed this form of pronunciation while living in the US for a some years. It appeared most commonly among African Americans, which confused me. I had never heard this form at home, or during my senior school years in South Africa. I take it from your fascinating and most informative talk that this form must have entered North America from West African slave-trade English, perhaps copied from the oral traditions of the sailors and the gang bosses. This would explain why it isn't commonly heard in English-speaking Africa itself, only among the African diaspora. Interesting.
it could also have developed seperately. There is a Gullah language professor, Sunn m'Cheaux, who's on UA-cam who I think talks about it in one of his shorts if you're interested in that.
Because it is a feature mainly in West Africa
Speak for East Africa alone perhaps, because in Nigeria and lots of West African countries they say aks not ask.
@@moremiaj4786
I've friends from Ghana who says, deks instead of desk. God English is Pristina even better than most Americans.
We say 'aks' in Nigeria.
"a woman can't be arsed to leave a restaurant because she's breastfeeding a child" absolutely SENT me
But as a breastfeeding mum, also totally makes sense 😆 I may have finished my meal but I cannot be arsed to unlatch her and deal with her crying!! 😆
And where exactly should a child eat, the bathroom?! On the curb outside in the snow? In the car?
@@DivineLightPaladin Remember, making facicious comments weakens your argument.
I agree that women should be able to breastfeed in public, but implying there is no choice is simply false. Formula exists and it's more then adequate.
@@Stettafire Mums can also express breast milk & bottle it, for future use, as a father, I've fed my son both breast milk & formula.
It was a brilliant pun. The timing after the other examples was perfect.
In the US “Aks” is looked down on simply because it’s typically associated with AAVE speakers and African Americans. Thanks (or Thansk?) for sharing the history of the pronunciation. Fascinating.
And people that don't read - who would be asking some questions when they see "Aks" spelt... "Ask".......
@@SarahC2People who say it wrong also commonly misspell it as "axe".
Cool to know the history of this. I always associated "aks" with AAVE, but it's cool to know it's more widespread. Thanks for another great video!
Thank you for this enlightening video. I must admit, I was one of those people who looked down on those who said aks instead of ask. I never knew it had linguistic origins beyond laziness. Thank you for opening my eyes and helping me to remember not to not look down on others, especially due to my own assumptions that I understand something even when I've done no research on it.
Though it is the old English word, the language, adapts. It changes and it evolves.
Here's a rule of thumb. If you think people do a thing because they are lazy. They don't
Speech isn't easy to change your brain is wired how it is. If you've ever tried learning a second language you know it's difficult but let me tell you what's more difficult is getting rid of pronunciation habits you made while you were learning. Learning a new accent and dialect to live your entire life in is possibly harder than learning another language in my opinion
@@micayahritchie7158 I agree.
I've been meaning to ask for a video on this one. I've worked in rural areas of eastern Australia, and aks is extremely prevalent to the point that you can distinguish the locals (all who say aks) from the 'blow-ins'(who typically come from other regions). This might be a case of the theory of British/Scots/Irish influence, as historically, there has been a significant prevalence of missionary workers in the region and limited African influence.
An interesting study (?by Labov) showed that in the face of 'blow-ins', locals (the study centred on Martha's Vineyard) may exaggerate features of their dialect to distinguish themselves from the interlopers.
I'm an Aussie who has lived in rural eastern Australia for decades, and I have NEVER heard any locals say 'aks'.
I'm an aussie from rural NSW. I say "arksed". I never noticed it until my friend from Adelaide constantly pointed it out that people from my area at uni all said "arksed".
@@tsopmocful1958 Not sure where you've been but it's very common in Victoria .
I live in rural South Australia and my friend since childhood (and all her family) says aks(ed) and I picked up on it and told her and she never realised that she said it!
Very well put and informative. I've heard the word pronounced both ways but never heard an in-depth explanation. By far this is the best explanation of the word's origin i've ever heard.
This is such awesome content, and exactly why I love youtube, it's criminal that Geoff only has 100k subscribers. The final example was hilarious.
This reminded me of something from childhood I had forgotten about: pronouncing the word "iron" like it is spelled ("i-run") and being corrected by friends ("no, it's i-earn or i-yearn"). I didn't believe them, but was surprised to find that the first dictionary I checked agreed with them. American standard English transposes those sounds so consistently that it was given as correct. I'd love to know if that's specifically American or if it's more generally true.
It's the same in BrE except that we don't pronounce the 'r' at all! So in BrE 'iron' rhymes with 'lion'!
@@DrGeoffLindsey So what if you're talking about an iron ion?
@@DrGeoffLindsey Huh! That's so interesting. I suppose people find it easier to pronounce. Goes to show that "can't you read a few letters correctly" is a bit nonsense, though.
@@KJ-td5gt in my south-east English accent this would be pronounced I-yearn I-yon, but lion is more of a lye-uhn if that makes sense?
I love watching Dr Lindsey’s videos because it gives me so much to think about every-time hahaha Now on a day to day basis I notice things that I’m “mispronouncing” and get into discussions with my girlfriend about different pronunciations we grew up with which then leads onto the people we know that pronounce one way or the other!
Edit: as I say “yearn” and “y-uhn” out loud it seems near identical. In my head they seem different but in actuality they’re the same.
@@KJ-td5gt Most accents I have heard in the UK pronounce the o in lion (and iron) as schwa (like in Jason), and the o in ion as o (like in icon).
I have heard people pronounce ion the same as iron, but as you pointed out, that would get confusing if you need to tak about iron ions. Everyone I have heard speaking in a chemistry context has pronounced them differently, avoiding this problem.
Correction to up-loader.
08:40 He said "half-assed to research labs" and it's not taken from half-asked.'
An ADZE is a woodworking tool that has been used for thousands of years. It is used to “finish” the surface of timber. So if you ordered a product from timber that was only finished on one side properly, as in the visible side, it was done half-adzed. Full adze would be both sides. Typically one side was not immediately visible , so you could get away with only finishing one side of the timber or "half-adzed". Only when the buyers of said timber recieved it home they would discover the job was done "half-assed" or half-adzed"
Today of course half-assed means generally anything that was done half-hearted or in a lazy incomplete way.
Funny enough an Adze does resemble a type of Axe.
half-adze when pronounced correctly sounds like half-assed
Just found your channel and it is incredible! Such an impressive mixture of knowledge, editing skills and humor
Thank you for this. In New Zealand I have noticed more and more younger people saying "aks" recently. As a teacher I've always tried to get them to say "ask", not realising that it is, in fact, another correct form, albeit fairly rare here. I wonder where the influence comes from here, is it from television/movies/social media, or whether there is something about the Maori language/other Pasifika languages that has influenced in the same manner? Always good to learn new things.
The more I look for 'aks', the more I find it. It seems to be (or to have been) everywhere! Is it a feature of Maori English?
This is almost certainly due to the influence of US media, in particular US hip hop culture, on young people in NZ. Recent surveys have shown many young New Zealanders watch little or no media content originating from NZ and have also documented a rise in children starting schools with detectable American accents due to the predominantly US media they have been exposed to from an early age.
@@DrGeoffLindsey further research might be needed but my impression is that it’s been a feature of (young person’s) Māori English for a very long time, predating the hip hop influences
@@nathangriffiths6218 How certain are you? As this video shows, it doesn't have to be from America. This feature isn't particularily prevalent in mainstream US media, as the pronounciation /aks/ is generally restricted to AAVE, which most Americans don't speak, as stated in the video. It's probably not a good idea to jump straight to a "US bad" -type argument when other arguments are plausible or even favourable. Metathesis is apparently quite common in NZE (Godzone dictionary, Max Cryer) and it's certainly not a rare feature cross-linguistically. Maori doesn't allow consonants syllable-finally and "aks" respects sonority hierarchy better than "ask", which plausibly is/was easier for native Maori speakers to pronounce.
A few of my Maori friends growing up would say (and sometimes even spell) "aks".
6:59 -- in other words, he applied to be a news reader for the BBC, and when he was rejected, he swore to devote his life to the study of pronouncing things however you want
As a German, I've always associated aks with American Poc. Interesting to learn that it's also widespread in the UK and Ireland, but then again, I've never been to the Shetlands! 😺 (It's on my bucket list)
While common in AAVE, plenty of other american accents include aks as well :)
It mostly is laziness. It just so happens that black american is very much lazy english. Not sure why they do it. Blacks in hispanic cultures, especially carribbean did the same thimg tp spanish, very lazy spanish.....
As for other ethnic americans....never heard them say AKS
@@LilyUnicorn did you even watch the video? What a stupid comment
@@LilyUnicorn Did you watch the video?
@@LilyUnicorn you're a proper fool. watch the video you're commenting on before you go on a racist tirade.
I will admit, when I was younger, I used to be an "ask" snob when I was younger, but I've definitely changed over the years and appreciate the explanation.
It's funny, as a lifelong New Yorker, I've always associated "aks" with a Brooklyn or New Jersey dialect. I never imagined it would be common in the UK.
Very interesting. Back in the late 90s I took care of a white lady in her 60s who was from New York City and had what my colleagues and I in Seattle thought of as a thick "New York accent". She would say things like "can I AXE you a question?" and we thought it was funny.
It isn't common in the UK at all. Well, not before we imported half of Africa.
Not common in UK.
@Atheos B. Sapien A Yank accusing someone of being racist. It must be a day that ends in "y".
@@cockoffgewgle4993 ok cockoff
Fantastic 😊 I've studied phonetics of English and love this content. I have heard 'aks' used in northeastern US but as you pointed out only among my black friends. I've wondered about this history, so thanks for the lesson!
None of these people speak this way know why they did, or do. They speak this way because they have not been taught the correct way.
Humans speak so others understand, so being clear with your words has evolved over the centuries.
Axe means something completely different to ask. That is all.
It’s similar to names. People say my name means this or that when it just means “hey you”. But that doesn’t work with 7 billion people so your Jerry.
The mental backflips 😅
@@oneofthosepeople2101 You need to justify your assumption that language is prescriptive.
@@G_Demolished 😁
@@G_Demolished I have to admit, you got me, that’s the best troll I’ve read. ✌️
@@oneofthosepeople2101Fortunately, then, I understood what you meant when you wrote " You're " Jerry .
Many thanks for this, Geoff! In my part of the world, it is common for people to say 'graps' instead of 'grasp', and I felt a little bit annoyed when it came from the pulpit! But we've all done the same thing for 'brid' and 'waps', haven't we?
I often wondered where the differences originated. Really enjoyed this, thank you Dr. Lindsey.
Thank you so much for such a profound review on that interesting variation, never knew it goes way back into centuries.
I know this is a sensitive topic for some. You covered it so well, Dr Lindsey. Awesome as always 👌
I’ve always thought this pronunciation “curious” but had never realised it had such a long and venerable (Bede, Chaucer and Tyndale) history.
I've always wondered why "axe" was used in my area of southern America but now I know. It's a good reminder that there may be a good reason for something you don't understand. Thanks for the video.
This was interesting. But to me, the most fascinating moment was the final screen, where Geoff Lindsey wrote "Click here to subscribe" in IPA characters representing his dialect of English, which is quite distinct from my own-General American with some Northeasternisms. That moment brought home to me the difficulty or impossibility of devising a common phonetic orthography for English. The varieties of English have drifted so far apart that the only orthography that can unite them is one that is not phonetic. Of course, the example of ask/ax and the range of vowels used with each variant demonstrates that too.
IMHO, English spelling is hard not because of the variety of accents and diverging pronunciations; it's hard because standard spelling and standard pronunciation don't match. It's as if in 300 years pronunciation changed back to "aks" but we kept spelling "ask" while indicating the standard pronunciation as /æks/.
Hi Dr Lindsey, I was wondering if you've ever encountered people pronouncing words such as "create" or "nuclear" like "curate" or "nucular" respectively - I've started noticing both of these recently and I was wondering if there's a similar reason behind both phenomena and/or if there are other examples (and also how that happens)?
Thanks so much for your videos, they're always amazing
"Nucular" is very common, even from highly educated people and those in authority (George W. Bush was famous/notorious for saying it, but it's far more widespread than him). The key factor is that "nuclear" is a very unusual word in various ways, and many/most people don't make the connection with "nucleus". On the other hand, several common words end in "cular" (particular, circular etc.), including technical words like "molecular". And "nucular" is phonetically closer to "nuclear" than the spelling might suggest. What may seem odd to non-natives is that speakers would deviate from the spelling in this way, but of course natives have been accustomed all their lives to weird and random spellings.
@@DrGeoffLindsey And George W. Bush was not the only president who mispronounced "nuclear". Although he corrected it later in life, Jimmy Carter (who was trained in nuclear power plants on US sub in the Navy) had the strangest pronunciation of "nuclear" I have ever heard. ua-cam.com/video/wHdl_0q-F60/v-deo.html
@@DrGeoffLindsey Picking up on "create" and "curate", here in Plymouth, SW England, "brewery" can become "byoory" which I think is the same?
@@DrGeoffLindsey To me it sounds like 'Noo-killer', and it vexes me when I hear people pronounce it that way. I often say "can you say 'new'? "can you say 'clear'? .... then yuou should be able to say newclear as one word!
@@Drobium77 to me, nuclear and new clear are pronounced differently. 3 syllable nu•cle•ar vs 2 syllable new•clear. this might be influenced by the 3 syllable nu•cu•lar but idk
Very interesting topic. I become aware of this variety when I was studying different varieties of English and found a video of a teacher being praised for "teaching" Black people how to "properly" pronounce the word.
Fascinating! I never knew it had such a long history. It would be great to see a whole video on metathesis, with other examples.
Very true about that bit with “asked”! I noticed awhile ago when helping a Japanese friend learn English that I always pronounce the past tense as /æst/, as /æskt/ is actually quite difficult to say
Thank you for the fact-based, non-judgmental, non-racist, non-any-ist explanation. I must say I have judged the pronunciation in the past and will never do so again.
Laits speek and rite wizout judjing
@@sebastienh1100 The rules of language are only useful insofar as they facilitate communication between people. Don't tell me you have ever been confused about someone's use of the pronounciation "axe" in place of "ask". Think about it. You know precisely what they mean when they say axe, so the communication was successful. You're just upset that they don't follow what you perceive to be "The Rules" of language, which, as a matter of fact, don't exist in such a rigid and inflexible state save for within your own mind.
@@kingcrimson4133 - yes, culture, tradition, custom, heritage, love of the language of great authors are “purely in my mind”. 🤣🤣🤣
@@sebastienh1100 How hypocritical that you claim to love language while uselessly railing against the natural process which lead to the beautiful variety of language we know today. You don't actually love any of those things, you just hate change for hatred's sake.
@@kingcrimson4133 - you, then, love change for the sake of change, which is the stupidest way of looking at life and civilization (except when you are a teenager under hormonal pressure)
When I was working in the hospitals in downtown, Kingston, Jamaica, depending on where the patients were from, or the coworkers,AKS was common but so was DEKS “Haks at de deks” and I heard children using words like moksito. I am not a native English speakers. I never had issues with it, and I enjoyed all the different ways of speaking I encountered there, pronunciation, and grammar wise.
🇯🇲🔥🇯🇲🔥🇯🇲🔥🇯🇲🔥 I had to
8:43 you got wrong, Geoff. He is saying half-assed, not as a variant of "asked."
My best friend is from Louisiana and she pronounces ask as /æks/, despite her being white. From my understanding, having also lived in Southern Louisiana, it's pretty common to hear that pronunciation regardless of race, but it's pretty uncommon in most other Southern accents (aside from AAVE, of course). My accent is more Texan (DFW) than anything else, so I pronounce is more like /æːsk/, if I pronounce the /k/ at all.
After learning English language at A Level it has really opened my eyes to variations of english and how they come about. Still, i found this video really informative and entertaining!
I’m a simple person, I see Dr Geoff posted a video, I click
Thank you!
This is a great little UA-cam channel. It’s so refreshing to hear academic scholarship escape the academy and communicate more widely. I bet your colleagues are both in awe and probably a little jealous. Not that it is likely to be considered a significant contribution to the field. If you were Stormzy maybe…
This is interesting. Here in New Zealand, in my experiences living a heavily multicultural city, Māori and Pacific Islanders use “aks”, and they are looked down on for using it.
@@Pasta_watcher Why? Clarify
@@Pasta_watcher edgy
As a kid living in Australia, a neighbour of ours, would say, “arksed”… yet her brother and sister will pronounce it, “asked”.
It was put down to her being lazy, by parents and teachers… almost like a speech impediment
Do you know how hard it is to change your natural speech ALL THE TIME? It is exhausting. There's nothing lazy about it and why would you spend so much effort "correcting" a thing that literally everybody understands anyway?
@@micayahritchie7158 Because it is incorrect.
That's why.
I remember mispronouncing things as a kid and being told to pronounce them properly.
It only took a bit of practise to get it right and to make the former mispronouncing feel awkward and wrong to say.
We can't make excuses for it instead.
@@tsopmocful1958 I misread what the guy was saying
I thought that was also how the parents said the word
@@micayahritchie7158 I dont think that makes a difference.
@@SeekerGoldstone It entirely does because it's only a mispronunciation if that's not the speech the child is trying to reproduce
Very interesting video! And I had to laugh at the end when you added people saying “couldn’t be asked” instead of “couldn’t be arsed”. I lived in England for a good while thinking people actually said “I couldn’t be asked to do xyz”. It was only when I wrote it in a text message my boyfriend corrected
me, saying it’s obviously not asked but arsed.
Thanks for confirming that he actually does say asked 😜
(It made complete sense to me at the time that people would say asked.. like: “nobody can ask me to do this” was simply shortened to “I can’t be asked” 😂)
unfortunately, in those last situations they ARE saying "a*sed". "asked" came later because it sorta makes sense.
@@notwithouttext The really interesting thing, I guess, is how people assume something written is the 'real' thing.
I'm used to considering it as a related expression to "put your back into it" and half-arsed as a half effort. If you're physically pushing or pulling, you really should be using both cheeks.
Yes, and they sound as stupid and uneducated as those who say "aks." That doesn't make it correct.
@@jonthibault5509 no one says arsed with a k though
This was informative; I learned something. Thank you!
I've noticed this a lot. I've also noticed that people say "phree/free" instead of three.
Another fun detail to this. The presence of the Aks form is likely the main reason why Ask still exists to begin with! All old english words with sc underwent a sound change, that resulted in them being pronounced like modern "sh", flesh was once flǣsċ. It's likely that if Aks never existed, modern day ask, would instead be "Ash".
I often wondered about the sk, when I learnt English. First, I just thought it must have been (re)introduced via Old Norse, knowing, that OE ǣsċian never developed into *ash, though, considering the early attested metathesis sc > cs (ǣcsian), it's plausible, because of the ever interchanging use of both forms, the sc withstood the palatalization. The High German cousin of OE ǣsċian is the now dated "heischen" as in erheischen (to request, to demand) the prothetic h is a comparatively young feature that got attached during the late MHG period (influenced by heizzen), the actual form "eischen" (OHG eiscôn) became obsolete and has always been rivaled by frâgên.
Do you have insight into why this change, which you implied was systematic, wouldn’t have applied to “flask”? Wiktionary indicates it also has Germanic roots. (It also indicates it went from Frankish to Medieval Latin back to Old English; maybe this change didn’t happen in Latin whereas it happened in some Germanic languages, and the borrowing back into this particular era of OE postdated the shift and the final-/sk/ cluster was still licit?)
@@masonm9823 The OED indicates that the Old English "flasce" (often "flaxe") had disappeared from the language by the time of Middle English. The word was later re-entered Modern English when it was borrowed from the French "flasque" in the 16th century, long after the sk→sh change occurred. (The ultimate origin of the word is murky. Variations of the word are found in most Romance and Germanic languages; it's unclear whether it began as a Late Latin word borrowed into Germanic or vice-versa. Or it might come from an older PIE root; several possible derivations have been proposed.)
You're a bit wrong here unfortunately. During the Old English period, flǣsc and many other words with 'sc' were already pronounced with the same sound as modern 'sh', whereas some words like āscian were pronounced like modern 'sk'. Ask wouldn't have become 'ash' even if 'aks' had never existed
Much of the difference in regional pronunciation just comes down to the different evolution of pronunciation in largely isolated communities, both here and in other countries. Also, when learning a new language, people often use sound-forms in their first language to say words in their second and subsequent languages, and if they still make themselves understood reasonably unambiguously I don't see how that is a problem. The first time I worked in a new startup in London, I had some difficulty with understanding the pronounciation of some of the workers there, but it didn't take long for my brain to adjust to what was just unfamiliar. These days of course with global media, we have exposure to people from all over the world, so I would imagine the problems an old fart like me has are less of a problem for the younger generation and will be less so for those in the future.
Finally, a well educated, well spoken person explaining the etymology without prejudice.
This has been bothering me for years. Finally! Someone who can educate me in a respectful manner, without judging me for not having known, or looking at me like I'm full of judgment myself.
I'm so glad I have subscribed to you channel! 👍 👍
I'm going to go WAY out on a limb here and say you're a white middle-class woman.
@@jonthibault5509 You happen to be incorrect. But let me ask you: Why judge my gender or class to begin with? You want to guess where I live, too? How is it relevant here, other than your preconceived notion of who I am, based solely on your uncalled-for judgements of me?
Non-judgmental people are always judging judgemental people.
@@johng4093 Any chance for a clarification here?
Interesting. Metathesis in constanantcluster -sp wesp/weps (wasp), rasp/raps (rasp) is quite widespread in Dutch and often viewed negatively in a similar manner, despite, in the case of wesp/weps, the -ps variety actually being found in written sources before the -sp variant. (uuapces, 8th century).
In some Austrian dialects, "Wespe" becomes "Wepsn" as well.
This channel is excellent at giving us answers to questions we didn't aks.
This has bothered me for over 30 years, and I never thought of discovering where it came from. But now I know. Thank you!
AAVE and Gullah Geechee creole speaker…
Ppl who say “why can’t you say it right” frustrate me.
Very interesting. I admit I've been a bit snobbish about aks myself. But you'll hear it all over Ireland. Along with "amn't" for "I'm notc (Shakespearean, I believe, though I may be wrong about that). Also,"I'm after cutting my hand", a literal translation from Irish.
I must admit, I thought the expression "can't be arsed" was "can't be asked" for about 20 years! I guess that's just how I first saw it written down. I used to think the people writing "can't be arsed" were reanalysing it til I realised "can't be asked" doesn't really make much sense either.
Come to think of it, I think writing it as "asked" might be some sort of written version of a minced oath which is why it's often written like that.
Oh boy, that last portion was brilliant.
The UA-cam transcriptions are most likely due to Google training the system to avoid swearwords except for extremely clear cases.
nah, youtube usually just avoids them or uses "[ __ ]" instead
not replace them with a similar word
I’m so blown away by what I’ve learned in this video. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
It's been my experience that the more snobbish someone is about language, the more incorrect they likely are.
Agreed. To be snobby and prescriptive about peoples' use of language is to dedicate yourself in opposition to the quite natural and harmless force of linguistic evolution. It's like finding a stream in the woods and dedicating yourself to halting its flow, simply because you have a strong (yet incorrect) conviction that water ought to always be still.
@@kingcrimson4133 Excellent analogy.
@kingcrimson413 You'll find that a creature known as a beaver does exactly that as it is an entirely natural and extremely beneficial act.
This is an excellent video!
From context, I figured out the phrase "I can't be arsed." to be some British way to say "I can't be bothered." or "I don't care." It didn't occur to me that it was "I can't be ASKED."
That makes so much more sense! LOL!
This channel is great.
Subscribed!
We also know from the documentary "Futurama", that aks will be the future form in the early 3000s America.
the EPIPHANY of "half-assed = half-asked" and "cant be arsed = cant be asked" was so EXCELLENTLY delivered at the end
I don't think "half-asked" has historical usage. I've only seen "half-assed" been used and it seems like the accepted etymology is a humorous mispronunciation of "haphazard"
@@Roteberht35 It's not that "half-asked" is used, it's that transcription software can't tell the difference between "half-assed" and "half-asked" because it was trained on English speakers who slur the word "asked" by itself so often.
@@merinawww Yeah you're right I just didn't consider that as something that would confuse people who used the transcriptions and misunderstood the OP
@@Roteberht35 No problem, that makes sense.
@@Roteberht35 you're actually correct in assuming what I thought about that bit. In retrospect the last bit is a little unclear in its purpose considering that I've checked the etymologies now...
My grandmother, of Italian descent, born in the USA in 1911, used the pronunciation "AXE" instead of ask. She also said "HAKE" instead of hate. As long as I understand what a person is saying, that all that matters to me.
'Hake' - I take it she loved her seafood!
@@tantona9315 I did help her prepare and deep fry smelts. 🙂
She was obviously an uneducated moron.
Bottom line...
@@jrcimini 😂
6:40 I think I'm more or less on the same page as this lady. English isn't my first language, but it drives me nuts when I hear people say "aks".
I also think my perception of speech and association with dialects makes it far too easy for me to perceive people differently based on the way they talk. I know that is not a good thing, so I'm glad you pointed this out on the end part there, because I need that reminder.
I had noticed the ethnic divide where aks was more prominent but I didn't know the full story until now.
Have you done a video on the origin and correct use of can't be arsed/asked?
Hm, I must look into where 'can't be arsed comes from'.
Pretty sure it's at least partially from/related to 'can't be bothered' and connected in some way to 'bothered' being used as a more polite alternative to ... other terms. Such as 'sheep botherer'. And if there's not a connection to something being 'half arsed' I'd be surprised...
But then, English is full of things that look like they should make sense in such a way but, in reality, really really don't, so who knows?
Hi Dr Geoff Lindsey, your channel is captivating! I am hooked on your videos. I appreciate that your explanations of forms and dialect are without judgement. I was raised in North East London and I have had my accent looked down upon many times. I have now untaught myself "ARKS" and now try to say "arsk" lol! Thank you.
I love these kinda videos! In my teens and early 20s I definitely was a bit of a 'grammar nazi', but ironically me correcting others because i thought I knew better was back during a time when I knew very little. These days I absolutely love the variation in both spoken English and written, it's so interesting to see how it develops, and where things come from, and the variations just get even more interesting when you take into consideration social and economic backgrounds.
Absolutely adore this channel for not belittling different uses of the language, but just explaining where things come from :D This is good info for me to have next time i hear someone mocking the use of aks. (unsurprisingly i tend to find there's some underlying racism behind mocking words like that in particular)
@@Pasta_watcher I'm sorry that you're going through some tough times right now. I hope your life improves. Know that you matter and your life is important.
Something this video made me realize is that not only do I usually say "assed" when I speak, but if I try to put emphasis on the 'sk' to say "asked", I usually slip up and say "aksed" instead. That's really interesting to me.
I heard the Geordie joke , 'I would have aksed her , but I didn't have an axe.', a lot when I was young. But it was a minority of people who used that form.
Really, thanks! It seems like 'ax/aks' has been used as a non-standard form all over Britain, but has declined recently. I think this makes it all the more likely that West Indians and African Americans simply got it directly from the old world.
I look at people strangely if they say 'can I axe you...' 🪓 I hadn't heard it used until I lived in Yorkshire in the mid 80s.
Having been brought up in the NE of England, aks, with a hard a, was generally accepted as normal and especially so in the pitmatic areas.
@@nickallen2071 Aks was indeed accepted as normal. I was born in Newcastle, and although Pitmatic was spoken less than 20 miles away , I struggle to understand it.
I had _no_ idea! I thought that people who say "aks" just couldn't pronounce or didn't hear the word as "ask". That settles it! I've watched a few of your videos before and UA-cam recommends them to me, but I'm subscribing now for fear of missing important info like this. I've been looking down on people who say "aks" ever since I first hear someone say it that was and I regret that sincerely now.
I used to get really bothered by different pronunciations ever since one day my dad randomly started saying frustrated as “fustrated” and drawer as “draw” (normally in my area we say it rhyming with the most common American pronunciation of door), which I had never heard him say before and he insisted he’d always said them that way, but I knew I had heard him say those words in the way I would consider proper before, so it bugged me every time he would say them.
Then I became aware of the ask/aks thing, and I first noticed it being said by classmates that I perceived to be rich white kids, so I had no idea there was a race or class association with it and figured it was just that they weren’t very bright and never outgrew a childish pronunciation. Then I learned that there was a race association, so even though hearing it felt like nails on a chalkboard, I never let that show (not that it bothered me enough to show it before knowing that anyway).
But then as an adult, I learned that language isn’t a prescriptive set of rules like I had been told in school, so I’ve been making a conscious effort ever since then to not just tolerate hearing words I consider wrong, but to actually get over being bothered by them. I’ve definitely made a lot of progress on it, but now when I talk to my dad, instead of being bothered by him saying “fustrated”, I’m bothered by him complaining about people saying “aks”.
Meanwhile in plenty of cases, I don’t even pronounce the k.
Here’s what I say in these sentences:
Can I ask you a question - ask
You already asked me three - asst or ass
No, I only asked you two - assd or asst
Go ask Jim - ass (sometimes I move my mouth into a k shape but don’t make a sound)
I already asked him - asst or assd
Then why are you asking me - ask
He told me to ask someone else - ass
Language is BOTH descriptive AND descriptive. Without parents correcting their kids and professors correcting their students, we would not have been able to read what our great grandparents wrote, let alone Shakespeare.
😄
Yes, it can be flustrating!
sure but imagine he said farxated. Thinking it was big and clever. one of the reasons people hate ARX is because it has an undertone of insulence. Just like itwould if a white man said ARX to a black man in a crowd of white men or white women
Fascinating. An episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" on TV once made "fun" out of Raymond's habitual "aks" even though he was trying to say "ask". It was positioned as some kind of speech impediment but I suspect that the writers had no idea of its derivations - and neither did I until now. I had it in the same camp as what I believe to be a trait inherited by children based on the way their parents speak, for example, of saying "somethink" or "somethin'", but it is NOT a South London dialect as claimed by a UK female TV football pundit who habitually drops her g on ing endings. I am from South London, and nobody I knew spoke like that. But I do know some Welsh who do. I dated a very beautiful girl in my early 20s who said "somethink" and I'm afraid it put me off her in the end. Maybe, subconsciously, I couldn't bear the idea of our children saying that. Who knows! I'm no linguist but I find this sort of thing interesting, and have been reading Bill Bryson's impressive (to me) books on the history of English and on the separate path that American English took. By the way, spellcheck makes it bloody hard to write this stuff - it keeps "correcting" things that I don't want corrected!
The ending with the captioning generously replacing arsed with asked had me laughing! When I was young I thought this was a "lazy American" thing because I remember hearing my mostly-white neighbors in Chicago area saying it. They were probably influenced by AAVE and/or Appalachian relatives (come to think of it, one of them may be a cousin who had West Virginian roots). I love how this channel is broadening my mind about how my early biased thinking that there was a correct way to pronounce English words is entirely wrong.
Aks drives me bonkers! But I appreciate the non-biased info about where it came from. I will remind myself of this the next time I hear someone say it. I also appreicate the reminder that I say "ass" or "assed", which sounds worse when I really think about it. 🤦♀️
I’m a native speaker but I rarely use “Asked” or “Asks”, I use “Ask” in place of either word. How interesting all our different variations and dialects!
How would you said "I asked you to do that yesterday"?
@@martinhawes5647 based on their comment, they would say "I ask you to do that yesterday"
@@nonaide That's just incorrect grammar, not a dialect
@@CptDangernoodle People say the same thing about aks. I'm sure the original commenter is not the only one in their area who uses ask in place of asks and asked. It is probably a regional variation. From a linguist's perspective, there isn't a right or wrong way to speak, there's just the ways that people do speak. Some people say assed instead of asked, some people say aksed instead of asked, and some people say ask instead of asked. There's nothing wrong with any of the ways people say it. If a person spoke and the listener understood, then that was a correct use of language
@@CptDangernoodle No it isn't, any more than 'I cut the bread yesterday' is 'incorrect grammar'. It's correct in their idiolect.
It's sort of there in the old Lincolnshire dialect as well. I remember the old farmers dropping the s and some having the long a, so it was more "ak" or "aak".