re: Why do so many white people in Louisiana mispronounce "ask" ?

No dog in this fight. Grew up in the "wiregrass" region of Alabama. Only heard black folk use ax/axe for ask? Had an 8th grade honors English class in about 1979 - Paul Johnson, who was not white, but was a very intelligent guy, would say, Mmmmssss Finey - let me, uh, uh, uh, axe you a querstion. She'd say, "What ya gonna do Paul, take an axe and ax me?"

He liked screwing with her as much as she did him.


Years later I befriended some baws from NOLA to Morgan City to Laffy. They all talked "funny" and they thought we did. Only one of those baws, he's 46 and grew up in St. Rose / Norco, said Axe/Ax. His father, pronounced "Fah-thuH" 50 miles north of me, said "Ask".

IDK. WTF?

You better not get lost in the quarter if you are coming to the game. Be sure to stay at a hotel on the West Bank where it is safe.

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Pacifickly instead of specifically..... Chester drawers Aunt - said awn-tee

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Heatherns is the one that gets me

I don’t know why you axe me this


But I do know. They all Ask’d For You.

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It's entirely related to the number of poor british who settled the area.

See thomas Sowell for a more in depth explanation of southern language essentially being slang.

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Black Rednecks and White Liberals ?

https://www.capitalismmagazine.com/2005/05/black-rednecks-and-white-liberals/

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Saying “acrost” for “across” or “ax” for “ask” are today considered to be part of black English. But this way of talking was common centuries ago in those regions of Britain from which white Southerners came. They brought with them more than their own dialect. They brought a whole way of life that made antebellum white Southerners very different from white Northerners.

Violence was far more common in the South — and in those parts of Britain from which Southerners came. So was illegitimacy, lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery. All of this would become part of the cultural legacy of blacks, who lived for centuries in the midst of the redneck culture of the South.

Illiteracy was far more common among whites in the antebellum South than among whites in the North, and of course the blacks held in bondage in the South were virtually all illiterate. On into the early 20th century, Southern whites scored lower on mental tests than whites in other parts of the country, as blacks continued to do.

Many aspects of Southern life that some observers have attributed to race or racism, or to slavery, were common to Southern blacks and whites alike — and were common in those parts of Britain from which Southern whites came, where there were no slaves and where most people had never seen anyone black.

Most Southern blacks and whites moved away from that redneck culture over the generations, as its consequences proved to be counterproductive or even disastrous. But it survives today among the poorest and least educated ghetto blacks.

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Don't tell me is a social class/educational thing. I have come across many lower class, uneducated folk in places like Texas and Mississippi and Ohio, and they don't say "let me axe you a question."

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I’ve heard it in virtually every state I have visited.

But then again I hang out with low class peeps

The coonass kryptonite:

Bring/take
Gone/went

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I have no idear.

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My 6th grade math teacher said idear instead of idea and it made me fricking speechless.

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See thomas Sowell for a more in depth explanation of southern language essentially being slang.

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Was an interesting read.