Aks for Ask in Appalachia

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hi, this is Linda DePue.

I live in Blountville, Tennessee, near the Virginia border.

I had a question about the use of the word ax, like A-X, I guess, instead of ask, A-S-K.

I have a few times heard my elders here. I had a neighbor who was way up in her 90s in particular. And she always used the phrase, ask. Can I ask you a question instead of ask? And I noticed a lot of people just seem to assume that was lack of education. But I know, and I know my neighbor didn’t go very far in school, so, you know, maybe that’s true. But she was extremely intelligent. But she grew up in an isolated farm area around here. And I just thought, well, maybe there’s more to the history of that than most people think.

Most people, when they think of ax, A-X, or A-K-S instead of A-S-K, they think of Black American English instead of White American English. And so they both stem from the same place. They both stem from these settlement patterns of Scots and Irish speakers of a variety of dialects coming to North America. But before that, they also come from older varieties of English. For example, in Old English, the verb was ascian, A-S-C-I-A-N. And you can see, you can hear ask in the first part of that.

But in both Old and Middle English, and so we’re talking a very long time ago in the history of our language, there were two words, ascian and axion. So the sounds, the S and the K, so the S and the K sounds were swapped. This is called metathesis, and it’s really common, especially for those two sounds when they’re near each other, for them to be swapped around. It’s very common. So it’s the kind of thing that would just happen in the mouths of almost any speaker of English. And it’s so common that people might not even notice, and it’s also common enough where a word can permanently switch.

But in this case, axion and ascian existed side by side for centuries. And eventually, axe and ask existed side by side for centuries. So when English speakers were coming over from the British Isles, there were a lot of different dialects. There wasn’t just one dialect. And so when they came over to North America, they brought all those varieties of English and planted them throughout North America. Again, not just one English, but many. And so that’s what we’re seeing here. These patches of Appalachia where axe is spoken, where axe is said instead of ask. Those represent those settlement areas. And it’s the same thing for Black American English. Those represent settlement patterns, usually Scots-Irish settlements.

The important thing that you said that I really, the most important thing you said was people misattribute this to lack of education. And it just isn’t so. The other thing that you said that is, you talked about isolation. This is the reason that these dialect features last. Geographic isolation in Appalachia was a real thing for a very long time. And so Appalachia developed and conserved its own dialect features that distinguish it in a noteworthy way from other U.S. dialects. And even today, Appalachia has preserved a sense of culture and identity that makes it stand out in a really important way. And there’s so much to be studied and cherished there. And acts can be part of that if people want it to be.

Right. Acts, you know, and it’s funny, acts is one of those dog whistle words where when someone wants to criticize someone as being unintelligent, they might imitate somebody saying it. But as we’ve just talked about, if you’re criticizing someone for saying ask, then you’re failing to understand English language history and U.S. history and linguistics and the complex sociocultural factors that bring that simple three-letter word and its variant through the millennia. Right? That is so interesting.

That’s so interesting. And people in this area, I think, have long been misunderstood and maybe undervalued. Linda, I am so glad you asked this question. Well, thank you for such a wonderful answer and for taking the time. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thanks, Linda. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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