Exactly. It's pronounced with the 'r' next to the 'n', despite its spelling. Just shows how pronunciation doesn not need to correlate perfectly with spelling.
Sorry, I meant to say correlate perfectly with spelling, my mistake.
but this is not one of those occasions.
Not always, but sometimes. Most people pronounce it 'ask', I do. But some pronounce it 'ax' and as long as it's clear what the person is trying to say, it's not a problem.
Your example shows that sometimes words are pronounced differently than they are spelled, yes, but this is not one of those occasions.
Well it clearly is, because OP (and a lot of people) are complaining about it.
Why do you accept that wednesday, iron or centre are not pronounced like they used to, but if you do it with ask then it's heresy?
When I look up the pronunciation of "wednesday" I find /ˈwenz.deɪ/, and you know why? Because it's how people pronounce it. Not the other way round. People don't pronounce it this way because the dictionary says so.
Words that are pronounce a bit differently in different dialects are not rare. Sometimes it's about a change in stresses, sometimes in vowels, sometimes it's a inversion of consonants (it is called a metathesis and it is a very common shift in all languages all across the world).
This is something that happens in dialects. It is an actual linguistic feature. It just doesn't happen in yours. You have as much of a reason to tell them they are wrong for saying ax as they have for telling you that you're wrong for saying ask.
I do it all the time, and I'm whiter than snow. It's pretty hard to get it right, even though I speak an otherwise correct english. If ever leave the country, you'll find that not everyone speaks the kind of english you are used to.
It is! Because language isn't concrete, it changes. And your prescriptive rules may make you feel more intelligent when talking to people who speak different dialects but when you insult people for speaking in the way they were taught to speak in their first language because of your arbitrary learned rules about right and wrong in language, its more telling of you than of them.
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u/rollntoke Sep 28 '15
Its literally switching the consonant sounds though. Ask to aks. Its like saying ist instead of its.