Why do black people pronounce 'ask' as 'axed'?

[Anonymous]

Literally every single black person i've ever heard say that word say it 'axed'.

Why?

[BlueCoyote]

Yes, or "aksed". It's a sociolect. A linguistic variety of the English language based on social environment instead of geography.
Generally speaking, we distinguish three forms of variation in linguistics:
- Dialects
- Sociolects
- Indiviuolects

The first category is the most well-known. It refers to geographic variation. For example New Yorkers speak a different dialect than Texans. Social variety has to do with all kinds of socially relevant factors, such as: age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, degree of education, race etc.. There's a whole subfield devoted to the research of these kind of variations, called sociolinguistics. For example William Labov and Lesley Milroy are two extremely influential and famous sociolinguists of the 20th century.
Individuolect is more of a hypothesis than a well-researched field at this moment. It's basically the idea in linguistics that every individual person has his/her own way of speaking, including not just word choice but also things like phonology.

The sociolect generally uniting black Americans is usually called "African American Vernacular English" (AAVE).
en.wikipedia.org/.../African_American_Vernacular_English

The feature "axed" is a morphological metathesis and a rather typical feature of AAVE.

[windknowsmyname]

We want to quickly say the words thats all. Like

May i ask you a question.
We say it in a faster a different ebonic manner
Ma'i ax ju a kwesjun.

I sometimes do it but not all the time.

[Alistayr]

Quicker to say, May I ask a question. And it isn't as easy to misunderstand.

[windknowsmyname]

@Alistayr yo, black people logic. Like eye wanna go tu da stow. ( i want to go to the store ) hey i i didn't start it. Im jus telling it how it is 🤔

[BrittBratt2416]

Could be a speech thing, cause I don't say ask as axed. lol I have an aunt who can't even say hospital, she says horsepital. And I've come across white people who can't even say the word wash, they say worsh.. can someone explain that? So it must be a speech thing.. some people just can't say certain words correctly.

[Anonymous]

White people in the south do too, it's just vernacular, no big deal

[Asker]

but it's not as wide spread as black people. i live in Cali and black people here say it like that here too.

[Opinion Owner]

Ok 😂😂😂

[ken718]

I don't know many words vary that is dat also depends on person some say it normal some white people talk weird 2

[Prime_Sol]

because they are fucking lazy. Damn that would be annoying.

[Maxemeister]

I've done it before. It's faster to say. I prioritize the ease of what I do over the "proper" way

[Alistayr]

How very spid.

[emerald77]

White people do it too.

[Asker]

but it's not as wide spread as black people. i live in Cali and black people here say it like that here too.

[AveronRoland]

Its slang. Depends were the black guy grew up.

[Anonymous]

different accent