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DC Public and Public Charter Schools
Ax vs Ask
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Anonymous
| Lighten up Francis. |
Anonymous
| African American English?!! You have got to be kidding me. I would love to know the rest of the words that comprise African American English. I'm African American and wasn't taught this language. Where was I supposed to learn this? |
Anonymous
| Thank you 1:16. I'm also dying to AA English. Perhaps I can take it in school? Can you let me know where it's taught? |
Anonymous
Not sarcasm at all. I really think that is what her kid would do. |
Anonymous
This is an ingrained speech characteristic--impossible to change. The equivalent of asking you to monitor yourself saying 'like' when you're on the phone with your gf. Your child would probably be in far worse shape if they are also hearing it on the playground from friends -- that is who kids truly emulate. Is your child? If it's just the teacher, your modeling the 'ask' pronunciation at home with your child will win out in the end. Value the teacher for all the good things you mention the school is imparting, and don't make a stink over this. It's hostile and ask vs. ax is on dubious ground linguistically. Use of double negatives or "I be happy" etc. would be far clearer to stake a grammar high ground position than a pronunciation variation. |
Anonymous
I say "warsh" instead of wash if I am in an informal setting or have had a drink  I cannot help it, and I know that it is technically incorrect. It is also how everyone in my region growing up said the word. I am certain there are others that my partner could point out- as she's from the northeast and I am from the midwest. We kid one another about these pronunciations often.
Ax vs. Ask to me is the same, except that in this area it is often used by African-Americans. They probably think I sound silly when I say warsh, and I feel the same way about ax. It is not a statement of my intelligence, nor the teacher's intelligence, it is a regionalism. I consciously make an effort to "pass" when I change my poor midwestern farmer pronunciations to educated middle class east coast pronunciations. When I am in an audience where I am comfortable, I make less of an effort and one can hear my regional dialect. This teacher, I have no doubt, knows that the word is "ask" but chooses not to change her pronunciation for her class, or her regionalisms slip in during the course of a day. I personally love hearing people's dialects and regionalisms. I feel like the "ask vs. ax" is made a big deal of most often due to the speakers race and ingrained racial stereotypes about African Americans. Nobody has ever told my grandma not to say that she's "warshing" the clothes. Then again, she'd probably swat you with her wooden spoon if you did. |
Anonymous
| I don't think I've ever heard a white person say ax for ask, but when I do hear ax the person saying it has always been AA. |
Anonymous
| Every heard Joe Pesci speak in "My Cousin Vinny?" |
Anonymous
| OP, when I first saw the title of your thread I was going to post "depends where you're at" as a funny, white trash -- er, undereducated -- response but you actually used it in your opening paragraph. I think it's the equivalent of 'ax' vs. 'ask.' |
Anonymous
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A lot of Chicago Italians (in my experience but maybe just Chicagoans in general) say "asks," it is just a shade away from ax, but it is definitely an 's' on the end. In a sentence:
"So, I asks her what the hell is wrong with that? You know what she says to me? She says that it's just not normal. Then I asks why not, because I wanted to know..." Totally something that could be overheard in my parents house. They can turn it off, too, but when they speak to certain people it's like that with a full on Chicago accent, though. |
Anonymous
You sound like those people that claim every bad driver on the road must be Asian. Just so you know. |
Anonymous
Chill out. AAVE is a legitimate dialect. I am black but I do not speak it (could not if I tried), don't want to speak it, and was teased by other black kids for not speaking like that, so I'm not defending it from a personal level. Please take time to read portions of any of the several scholarly articles that are just one Google search away, or even just read the Wikipedia page on the topic, before making fun of something just because of your ignorance on the topic. http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam034/2003268698.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English
Yes, you can in fact learn about it in school. I'm not sure why you're dying of laughter at the thought of it- I'm really surprised that any educated person has never even heard of it (assuming you're educated). I've never studied it, but I turned to my good friend Google to find some links to schools where the subject is taught: http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/classes/136/ http://linguistics.osu.edu/students/undergrad/minor/afam http://www.ncsu.edu/linguistics/courses.php ---------------------------------------- On topic- I wouldn't like my child's teacher to have improper grammar and the "ax" instead of ask would bother me. I'd just let him know that ask is the proper way to say the word. |
Anonymous
I agree with this. |
Anonymous
If my children's teacher used "asks" and "says" in that way, I wouldn't be happy about it, and would bring it to her attention - and I think most prople would. But here's the question - would there be a substantial subset of people howling, "But that's how we speak - it's the Chicago Italian dialect! It's racist to say that it's improper or incorrect!"? No, I don't think so. So why is this any different? Just my opinion, but I think "ax" and "I asks her . . . " each sound equally uneducated, and I would hope that my kids' teachers wouldn't use/model that kind of language. |
Anonymous
No one in this thread is "howling" that it would be racist to correct her. A few posters have just explained why the teacher (assuming she's black) might talk that way. If Have you read 09:24's post? She made a good point. |