Can I Ask A Serious Yet Sensitive Question About Race And Grammar Without Being Falsely Accused Of Racism ?

Question

I have always . . . .always wanted to know why black people(educated and uneducated) say the word 'Ask' as 'Axe' .
They are not even close and it baffles me that even though educated people may have said 'axe' when they were younger , but man , so many still say 'Axe' even after maturing and having an education .
Nevermind the fact that even uneducated people are certainly capable of knowing the difference .

'ASK' and 'AXE' are two completely different words and each of us learned in school that when we became adults we'd be judged by the words we chose .

So what's the deal ?
Thank you .

Answer 1

I have a Caucasian (or should I have said White?) friend from Australia who speaks with a delightful and perfect AU accent that includes 'axe' for 'ask'!
Go figure!
.

Answer 2

According to what you wrote, it doesn't sound to me that you were being racist. You were doing your job. When one buys alcohol or tobacco they should expect to be carded no matter what the circumstances, but oddly enough most people get offended by getting carded. When the transaction doesn't go as quickly or at all like someone envisions anger is the first thing that usually ensues and if there is an opposing race on the otherside of the counter it can easily be mistaken for being racist. In the end, you are doing your job and you have the right to card people for these kinds of products so don't feel like you did something wrong, if you do then your letting the ignorant customer win. I say keep up the good work. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

I suspect the reason simply is due to habit, in a way.

I tend to think it's somewhat akin to one's accent, meaning that it's a vocalization habit that many people never lose. But in the case of "axe," I feel it's due more to habit than accent. Just as with an accent, some are not even aware, I'd bet.

Although one's accent plays little or no role in verbal communication, it's a characteristic of one's way of speaking that we often retain over the years. I've seen many intelligent people mis-pronounce certain words, yet they continue to do so out of habit and to a large extent, I think they're simply unaware.

Take this often-used phrase, for example: "Where the hell are you going?"

What does that mean? Yes, I get the general sense that someone is angrily asking where someone is going, but what does it mean to say "where the hell"?

After some years of using the same phrase myself, I made a mental connection with the rules of grammar and began to wonder about that. Now, if I need to say that phrase, I say it as "Where *IN* hell are you going."

Here's another example that helps to reinforce what I mean: I might say, "Where on Earth have you been" or "Where in hell have you been." Yet, many would say "Where the hell ...". Get it? For reasons unknown to me, I think the preposition that should precede "hell" has evolved, if you will, into "the." I have no explanation for why this might have happened, though.

So as I see it, if you're going to ask about "axe" for "ask," we might as well also discuss this "the hell" thing, too.

Without regard to ethnicity/race, here are a couple of other frequent mispronunciations that I hear:
skreet for street
Warshington for Washington
airaplane for airplane
ascared for scared
earl for oil

On a related note, although I've never had a problem with homonyms before, in recent years I've edited my writing only to discover that I've written "there" for "their" or "they're." It's been happening with other similar situations and it makes me wonder, especially since this has never been a problem for me before.

I guess many of us have our little language quirks.

Answer 4

Personally I haven't noticed. But I don't think you can say it's a race thing. People mispronounce words for all sorts of reasons.
For years I would say the 'sh' sound when I should have been saying the 'ch' sound, until in the nineth grade a young girl laughed me to scorn. I went home to see what was I doing wrong. I had no idea I had missed something so important in phonics.
Now was that my fault or the schools fault? I don't know but the main thing is I finally reconized there was a problem and corrected it.
I no longer say, "I'm goingt to put on my choes so I can buy a shicken meal." LOL!
Praise God that we are all learning. Doesn't mean it was a race thing. I just missed something early on in school.

Answer 5

I don't know that I can agree with you on this one. I think maybe we should think of it as more of a dialect thing than a grammar issue.
Ever tried listening in on a conversation between fomronr from Louisiana and someone from Ohio? Neither one of them can understand each other.
I used to work in International Sales for a large manufacturing company, and constantly received mis-directed phone calls from people who couldn't be understood and were assumed to be speaking another language.
If you want to get technical - we don't speak proper English either. I guess language evolves over time.
My parents are from Ohio and say "warsh" instead of wash - I give them a hard time about where the 'r' came from, but it's pretty common in a rural setting to speak like that. They also say "lish" instead of leash. My uncle pronounces Wilson as "Wiltson" - he's from NC. My boss is from Oklahoma and says "querstion" instead of question.
If you want to get into the whole debate about people saying things like "fo shizzle" and adding k's into words like saying "skrimp" instead of shrimp, we could also debate text-speak. I personally think both are funny.

Answer 6

What happens is children grow up with the adults closest to them speaking that way. Most people are not strong enough to break themselves out of the mold. I know that I catch myself saying it often. I grew up around my elders to whom were born in South Carolina and they "butcher" just about every word! People have to make an effort to correct they way they speak. And just a little FYI its not only African Americans that say that. I've seen AND heard a number of Caucasians saying it as well! It has more to do with pronunciation than education.

Answer 7

Honestly, I think a lot of it has to do with regionalisms. I live clear out in the Western US, and we have what I think of as "Utah-isms." They include:

"Let me aks you a question." (Let me ask you a question.)
"I think that's ignernt." (I think that is ignorant--ignorant meaning rude, not its actual dictionary definition.)
"We was down to Provo." (We were driving to Provo, or We were in Provo--meaning must be gleaned from context.)
"He's down to the Point." (He is in prison. Our state prison is located in an area commonly called "The Point of the Mountain.")
"It ain't matter much." (It does not matter much. This one puzzles me, as "ain't" is a contraction, of sorts, of "is not", so that's not even the correct verb! Shouldn't it be "It don't matter much"?)
"She has such a special spirit." (Actually a Mormon-ism roughly meaning she's uglier than new-born sin, so we have to focus on her spirit or soul to be able to find something nice to talk about--also used even when the person is also ugly on the inside. They really believe around here that if you cannot say something nice, you shouldn't say anything at all, but they cannot keep their mouths shut, so they find themselves saying silly things.)

All of those expressions are used almost exclusively by those born and raised in Utah, regardless of skin color. Since the overwhelming majority of people here are white, it's used mostly by white folks. However, black folks born and raised here use them, as well. Black people who have moved into the area after living somewhere else generally use normal English. The only exceptions are kids who are heavily into hip-hop and rap culture. Black and white are equally involved here, and they do tend to use "aks", but they also call women "hos" or "bi*****", so I generally ignore them. I figure they will grow out of it once their musical tastes change.

The only places I have been in the US where there were a lot of black people are SoCal and Florida. There, the most distinctive thing, to me, anyway, was that any black female I talked with usually called me "sister" or "girl" and that they have this really neat way of saying "mmmm" with various intonations which can mean anything from, "That guy is hot," to "I understand what you are saying and I agree with you." Strange ways of saying certain words were shared across all people in the same socio-economic group whether they were black, white, brown, or purple with yellow polka dots.

Answer 8

Earnest my friend....it is considered a dialect issue.

My father, from the Bronx, say the number 3 as tree!

It's purely where you were taught to speak and the fact they no one thought enough to correct it when spoken numerous times.

In many areas of the world people call their Mothers 'Mom'.

But in Jersey...my mother is Ma!

Answer 9

I've seen every race use poor grammar on Yahoo! Answers. I personally find it to be annoying, but I think that some people think that they are being cool.

Answer 10

I agree. It's hard enough trying to understand people w/thick accents, but even worse when they don't speak properly. Not to mention the fact that it makes you sound just plain ignorant.