Ask vs. Axe

It used to be that both pronunciations were quite common. Nowadays, African Americans have preserved axe, and ask has become accepted as the standard. There are still people in England who say axe. It goes way back.

its just a thing

It’s easier to say axe than ask. Sound changes happen all the time and there isn’t really a “why” other than it was easier.

It's a very long story [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nysHgnXx-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nysHgnXx-o)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Vernacular_English

It happens in Ireland too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metathesis_(linguistics)

This is an example of African American Vernacular English which is a dialect found commonly across North America. Some other common aspects of AAVE include but are not limited to: * double negatives * altered conjugation of the copula * omitting the copula * dropping "-ing to" (going to => gonna) There's a lot to learn, but it's worth your time since AAVE is widely used. Often, certain AAVE phrases will become so prevelant that they make their way into popular culture, like the example word, gonna, I used above. It started as AAVE, but is now commonplace is casual English. Here's a guide if you're interested in learning more! https://www.lingoda.com/blog/en/what-is-aave/

Lots of AAVE things come from the Southern US. And those come from certain regions of the UK where the White settlers lived before coming to America. Saw YouTube video that explained more details linguisticly.

The short of it, is that sometimes sounds swap places. Aks was the original word, but then people started saying ask instead. Both coexisted for a long time but ask became the majority pronunciation and the standard for spelling. African Americans largely preserved the original pronunciation, but other groups did as well, they are just less prominent in media.

It is also the standard English pronunciation of ask in the year 3000 (according to Futurama).

this AAVE phenomenon has actually moved beyond ask/axe. I've encountered it a couple of times on youtube and some documentaries where /sk/ is pronounced /ks/ (ex. "escorted" pronounced as "excorted").

Yeah, people have been aksing questions for over 1000 years at this point. As in we have a lot of pronunciation spellings from Old English, where people wrote things how they were pronounced, and "acsian" is an attested variant of "ascian". So while "ask" is the *"correct"* form, it's extremely common in certain dialects to "aks" questions instead

Different dialect.

I'm from Australia. Axe sounds the same as its spelt like everywhere else..however ask is pronounced more like 'arrrsk'

In nyc we say axe a lot too

[Here's](https://youtu.be/7DeWh9UuwMY?si=S_u5SXiANK0Jnhzu) a good video about it.

They used to be interchangeable hundreds of years ago (ask and aks), but I think the modern use is a resurgence unrelated to that, stemming from some accents just making it a more natural way of saying it?

Its "aks"(ask) not "axe". In some accents theres an audible difference between them. Thats an alternative pronunciation for ask. Very common in certain accents. Instead of the /sk/ sound after the *A* its a /ks/ sound

Axe is incorrect pronunciation. The axe pronunciation would be correct if the "k" and the "s" in the word "ASK", were reversed, resulting in a new word "AKS." There is no reason I know to reverse those letters.