[FreedaBee]

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Why do so many black people say 'aks' instead of 'ask' or pronounce words ending in 'th' like they end in 'f' ('I'll go ask Keith' becomes 'I'll go aks Keef')? It doesn't seem to be tied to any particular segment of the black population. That is, it's not just people from the South or a certain age group or those above/below a specific education or socio-economic level. I know it can be hard to break a speech pattern that you've grown up with, but why would you want to purposely mispronounce a word when you know how it really sounds? I mean, I grew up saying 'basghetti' and 'liberry' but I don't still do it.

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[Ann L. Lowenstein]

Welcome to the wide world of 'Ebonics.' blacks who speak that way generally do so because they've been socialized by their 'cultural leaders' to believe that their illiterate ghetto slang is a 'language' which is 'unique to the Afcayan-'Maycayan ekpeerans', and that to speak normal standard English makes them 'race traitors.' Blacks who don't buy into that horsecrap speak pretty much like anyone else.

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[Jalissa-&-Charles]

We feel as though as long as people understand what we are saying, it doesnt matter how we say it.

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[Daniel]

African Americans first learned to speak American as slaves, Slaves taught the new slaves. Since this was not our native tongue, we learned the language incorrectly. This mispronunciation is continued from our childhood on unless we make the effort to speak correctly.

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[Melissa28586]

You are describing characterisics of African American Vernacular English. Just as 'Standard American English' has set grammatical rules, so does AAVE. There have been countless studies done on the subject. Check out Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English

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[David]

I've wondered about that, too. I have notice the tendency much less with educated black people. Do white people do anything similar?

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[John S.]

Most black people talk the way that they do because of the very reason that you pointed out: they grew up with that particular speech pattern. People tend to stay together in their own racially and culturally unified groups. If a black person is around other black people most of the time, then that black person may never feel a need to change the pronunciation of word since other black people probably won't have difficulty understanding it. As an interesting historical note, in Middle English, the word 'ask' actually was pronounced 'aks'; you can find examples of this in untranslated works by Geoffrey Chaucer.

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[Jim]

study diction and regional speech patterns. Most Black folks migrated from the south so since we tend to be raised in households with southern speech patterns then we tend to speak that way as well.

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[Brad]

a slight mixture of dialect with a LOT of ignorance. The same reason a lot of (mostly) white people come to my job and 'ASK' about inkjet 'cartilages' instead of 'cartridges' and 'UBS' instead of 'USB' Cables. Also, it's possible that no one has tried to correct them, and now MIGHT not be a good time!

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