Lemme Axe You Sumtin'.

A few years ago The Onion printed one of their sidebar headlines reading "Black community terrorized by 'ask' murderer." Yeah, it was funny, and in line with The Onion's "equal opportunity offensiveness" policies (although having read Animal Farm and observed American popular culture for 40 years I always suspect that some people are more equal than others), but the truth is, saying "axe" for "ask" is not a black thing, it's a regional thing. From Connecticut down to Baltimore, you will find people of every hue axing for directions, axing how their friends are doing, and concluding their remarks with "I axe you?" Some people on the Northeast Corridor ask, but most of them axe. I ask, but my yoga teacher, who is from North Jersey, is an unrepentant axer. The only group you will find who consistently ask and don't axe are first generation immigrants. They ask, and sometimes loftily "ahsk."

Is axing wrong? Technically yes. If you look up "axe" in the dictionary you will find "a cutting tool that consists of a heavy edged head fixed to a handle witht the edge parallel and that is used esp. for felling trees and chopping and splitting wood," not "to call on for an answer." But in another way it is no more than the invitation "Do you want to come with?" in Minnesota or ordering a "root beer coke" in Tennessee. To me regionalisms have their own immunity, and while the other language folks will sniff, I'm always willing to let a regionalism slide. It's not quite like slang, which has its own logic, beauties and even rules of usage, but in a country as big as the US, local idiosyncracies are unavoidable. And why avoid them? While I bristle at words used incorrectly and out of their context, I find regionalisms rather charming. And when my Jersey yoga teacher tells me that she's gonna axe me to lift up my butt a little in my down dog, I find it a comforting reminder of home.