Re: OT: I'm a Southerner now!

On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:57:33 -0500, notbob <notbob@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2006-08-09, TammyM <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

whites alike. Also "fitty cent" for fifty cents. It's pretty common,
IME, although not the standard by any stretch.

I was going to ask, as I have a few times before, why the seemingly
corrupt phrase "axed" is so common among black folks and even some white
folks. But, I just now discovered this on the web:


"Our Living Language: Ax, a common nonstandard variant of ask, is often
identified as an especially salient feature of African American
Vernacular English. While it is true that the form is frequent in the
speech of African Americans, it used to be common in the speech of
white Americans as well, especially in New England. This should not be
surprising since ax is a very old word in English, having been used in
England for over 1,000 years. In Old English we find both scian and
csian, and in Middle English both asken and axen. Moreover, the forms
with cs or x had no stigma associated with them. Chaucer used asken
and axen interchangeably, as in the lines ?I wol aske, if it hir will
be/To be my wyf? and ?Men axed hym, what sholde bifalle,? both from
The Canterbury Tales. The forms in x arose from the forms in sk by a
linguistic process called metathesis, in which two sounds are
reversed. The x thus represents (ks), the flipped version of (sk).
Metathesis is a common linguistic process around the world and does
not arise from a defect in speaking. Nevertheless, ax has become
stigmatized as substandarda fate that has befallen other words, like
ain't, that were once perfectly acceptable in literate circles."

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/%22axed%22


Well, close my oral orifice to its maximum aperture!

VERY interesting, nb! I never thought to check out the origin, just
assuming it was a natural dialectical evolution (or some such).

ObFood: fried chicken tonight (with roasted taters, and green peas),
grilled spareribs manana (cole slaw and grilled corn on da cob), and
Damsel's smoked teriyaki chook Friday night (haven't decided sides
yet). It's good to be in my household this week.
.

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