by EMILY MELTON
Lifestyles Editor

Ask. Aks. Axe. I ask/aks/axe you: which is correct?

In fact, after perusing similar question-and-responses on yahoo.com, you will get answers that blame the education system, the lack of reverence toward English grammar, even America itself.

“You can’t ‘aks’ a question!,” they wrote. “You can use an ‘axe’ to chop a tree, not a question!”

I won’t lie – hearing what I thought was a mispronunciation used to get under my skin, but taking a course in linguistics really changed my perception of the word.

In class, we learned that pronouncing “ask” as “aks” is actually an example of metathesis, the switching of sounds within words and the process of its general acceptance among certain people.

For the most part, all Modern English can be traced back to Old English.

Over time, words change, become modified and are spelled and sound differently than they used to.

“Ask,” for example, was derived from “acsian,” and in “acsian,” the “k” sound comes before the “s.”

So, though “ask” is generally accepted, it seems a bit odd that many scoff at the pronunciation of “aks,” deeming it incorrect, a mark of laziness or unintelligence.

“Aks,” however, is more closely related to its Old English ancestor than “ask” is, and I imagine a scholar or poet or linguist from many centuries ago, before hearing the transformation of the word, would deem “ask” pretty peculiar.

Point being, language has no book of rules; rather, it continually changes, and acceptable forms of words are adapted throughout varying cultures.

The phenomenon is similar to the accents that alter the sound of certain words with no effect on their spelling or meaning (think of how “bag” is typically pronounced in the South and compare it the typical pronunciation of the same word in the North).

This is the lesson I learned from the history of ask/aks/axe.

The use of one is not “better” than the other; all three pronunciations share the same exact meaning and originate from the same exact word, though, at the present time, “ask” is more commonly accepted.

Some people adopted its pronunciation one way. Others adopted it in another.

So, to those who want to take a red pen to the mouths of those who “mispronounce” the word, disregard the blame placed on the education system, the lack of reverence toward English grammar, even America itself.

Relax.

Just remember the nature of language.

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