Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
“People come and acts for autographs, they cry, and they’re even offered things of high value.”
from an undergrad student writing. Wonder if the author is a speaker of AAE/AAVE?
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Fascinating. Ask comes full circle and then goes full eggcorn. I came across this interesting passage in Wikipedia:
The pronunciation /ˈæsk/ for ask, now considered standard, descends from a northern version of the verb that in most midland and southern texts through the 1500s was spelled with “x” or “cs”, showing pronunciation as /ˈæks/. Chaucer, Caxton, and the Coverdale Bible use “ax”; Shakespeare and the King James Bible have “ask”.[4]
It wouldn’t take much tweaking to wring some meaning out of act instead of ask. Here’re some more hits.
The registration takes maybe 2 minutes and simply acts you a little about your background and your interests.
Consumer survey come-on
very nice person…. but does not teach well (...) when someone acts a question she answers that was hte stupidest thing she had ever heard
Teacher ratings
When a person acts a question, there are typically 2 possible answers. The 1st is the answer, the 2nd is “I dont know”.
Computer support forum
Can “act” break out on its own? Don’t acts. You have to wonder about cupertinos here though – for acsed for example.
laura, you acted me a question, I do think that questions are normally followed by an answer :D
Teen Chat snippet that you’ll have to cut and paste at http://www.google.ca/search?q=“acted+me+a+question”&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
It was weird that sometimes I could interrupt and put in my two cents without having directly acted a question.
fanfic
Later: There’s a lively discussion on ask/aks over at the ahead-of-the-wave Language Log.
Last edited by burred (2012-08-20 18:09:03)
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