Lionel Nation - Linguistics Uncovered: The Truth About 'Ax' in Black Vernacular
Aired: 2025-05-31
Duration: 08:15


=== Acts of Linguistic Resistance (07:44) ===

[00:00:00]  How many times have you heard somebody say, you know, what's with these black folks who keep using the word ax?
[00:00:07]  You know, it's ax!
[00:00:09]  I'm going to ax you a question.
[00:00:11]  I'm going to ax you.
[00:00:12]  Lizzie Borden took an ax.
[00:00:14]  Gave her mama 40 whacks.
[00:00:17]  John F. Kennedy didn't say, ax not!
[00:00:20]  Right?
[00:00:21]  This is what you hear all the time.
[00:00:22]  You think, oh, it's ridiculous.
[00:00:25]  It's some kind of submental, illiterate, uneducated, Well, guess what?
[00:00:32]  There are roots to it.
[00:00:33]  It's older than ask.
[00:00:36]  It goes back to Chaucer and Shakespeare.
[00:00:38]  They're correct!
[00:00:39]  They're correct!
[00:00:41]  Do you understand this?
[00:00:42]  No, you don't.
[00:00:45]  Sometimes you think things are one way, but they're not.
[00:00:48]  You see, the confusion, this confusion between Acts...
[00:00:57]  And ask is one of the most compelling, fascinating examples of how language evolves through time and through power and culture and race and class and all this other stuff.
[00:01:12]  And far from being a modern mispronunciation, or as my friend says, mispronunciation, which is kind of funny if you think about it.
[00:01:20]  Anyway, the form acts actually Predates ask by centuries.
[00:01:29]  In Old English, around 1000 AD or CE, depending upon where you're from, the verb appeared as axian.
[00:01:41]  A-C-S-I-A-N.
[00:01:43]  Or A-X-I-A-N.
[00:01:46]  And it was used interchangeably to mean to ask.
[00:01:52]  Now, over the years, Listen carefully.
[00:01:55]  Regional dialects across Britain and the UK and everything evolved with acts becoming widely used among the working class and in rural speech, especially in southern England.
[00:02:10]  Now, this is a fact.
[00:02:11]  Literary giants like Chaucer and Shakespeare used acts, A-X-E, in their words, demonstrating Demonstrating its legitimacy.
[00:02:23]  Shakespeare!
[00:02:24]  And as English settlers migrated to America, they brought their regional speech patterns with them.
[00:02:30]  Now, in the American South, and this is important, this is where a lot of this interesting stuff comes from and was percolated and fermented and fomented.
[00:02:41]  In the American South, where many English speakers settled, the axe form persisted.
[00:02:48]  Enslaved Africans learned English from these speakers, not from formal instructions, embedding acts into what would become African American Vernacular English, AAVE, but learned from British white folks.
[00:03:09]  AAVE is often misunderstood and unfairly stigmatized.
[00:03:13]  It's called Ebonics.
[00:03:15]  It's not Ebonics.
[00:03:16]  It's not ghetto.
[00:03:18]  Sometimes people will slam Jasmine Crockett for whatever reason it should be.
[00:03:23]  But her speech, one time she goes, child, I've never seen that kind of thing.
[00:03:28]  And they say, oh, it's uneducated.
[00:03:30]  No, that's a style.
[00:03:32]  But it's also a fully developed dialect with its own consistent grammar and pronunciation and rules.
[00:03:40]  Acts is just one example.
[00:03:42]  Other commonly maligned, Double negatives, which function as emphatic announcements and reinforcements, as they do in Spanish and French.
[00:04:05]  Finna, I'm finna go, I'm finna pay the man, I'm finna, or fixin to.
[00:04:12]  This is as valid future tense constructions.
[00:04:16]  And the habitual be as he be working, which denotes consistent or repeated action rather than something happening right now.
[00:04:27]  All of these features, all of these examples are logical, rule-based, and linguistically sound.
[00:04:34]  Even acts!
[00:04:36]  is an example of a metathesis.
[00:04:39]  A metathesis, a sound reversal that's common in English evolution.
[00:04:45]  English itself is full of such examples.
[00:04:49]  Bird used to be brid, and third, as in number three, was once thrid.
[00:04:56]  And the reason ask became dominant was not because it was better or more correct.
[00:05:02]  It was because elites...
[00:05:14]  Look, like, irregardless.
[00:05:16]  My favorite, irregarding.
[00:05:18]  It's considered legitimate but not preferred.
[00:05:23]  And often, along with classist and racist lines, is this concatenation of the two.
[00:05:32]  And as a result, acts.
[00:05:34]  Became associated with black speech and ignorance, despite its deeper historical roots.
[00:05:40]  Linguists today recognize this is a case where social bias, not linguistic merit, determined what was considered proper.
[00:05:49]  So when someone says acts, they're not butchering the language.
[00:05:54]  They're speaking a form of English that's been in use for a thousand years, passed down, preserved, and enriched.
[00:06:03]  Through oral tradition, ladies and gentlemen, resistance and culture.
[00:06:08]  Language is always evolving.
[00:06:10]  You know that.
[00:06:10]  It goes without saying.
[00:06:11]  And what's considered correct often says more about power than it does about grammar.
[00:06:17]  You see, understanding this doesn't just correct misconceptions.
[00:06:21]  It honors the real living history of our mother tongue.
[00:06:26]  Now, I know you didn't know this, and I know people are going to still resist this because there's something about it.
[00:06:32]  And I've seen that people say, oh, there he is.
[00:06:35]  As soon as you hear Acts, oh, there he goes!
[00:06:38]  I knew it!
[00:06:40]  Well, you didn't know it.
[00:06:43]  Now you know it.
[00:06:45]  Now you know it.
[00:06:46]  Because remember, the key to language, number one, is not speaking correctly, but being understood.
[00:06:52]  And there are many people I know who sometimes speak perfectly, grammatically correct, using terms that are...
[00:07:14]  I've heard people say things where I don't understand.
[00:07:16]  Eric Weinstein.
[00:07:18]  Nobody knows what he's saying.
[00:07:20]  And he confuses that with...
[00:07:23]  With genius.
[00:07:25]  His inability for people to understand what he's saying.
[00:07:27]  Does he see how smart I am?
[00:07:28]  No!
[00:07:29]  Because remember, remember, the number one goal is communication.

=== Hit The Like Button (00:45) ===

[00:07:35]  So let me axe you.
[00:07:37]  Let me axe you one more time.
[00:07:38]  Did you know this?
[00:07:39]  Of course not.
[00:07:41]  How do you thank me for this?
[00:07:42]  Well, very simple.
[00:07:43]  Make sure you subscribe.
[00:07:46]  Make sure you put everything, everything, put everything involved in this.
[00:07:51]  Please, make sure you know this.
[00:07:53]  Make sure you're aware of this.
[00:07:55]  Make sure you are 100% aware of what's going on.
[00:07:58]  Like this video.
[00:07:59]  Hit, hit, hit, hit, hit that like button.
[00:08:03]  It's very, very critical.
[00:08:05]  Make sure you also hit that button so you'll be notified of live streams and new videos.
[00:08:09]  And make sure you're subscribed.
[00:08:10]  And whatever you do, I beg, beseech, and implore you to comment.
[00:08:14]  Comment as you see fit.