m & n

[Barbara Need]

>David Bowie said:
>>From:    Thomas Paikeday thomaspaikeday at SPRINT.CA
>>
>><snip>
>>
>>: QUESTION TO PHONETICIANS: Is this something like metathesis as in the
>>: commonly heard "aks" for "ask" with a vowel thrown in between the
>>: consonants in question?...
>>
>>Somewhere along my training as a sociolinguist, i'd been told that the
>>ask/aks thing can be traced back to competing OE forms ascan/acsan, not
>>simply to (recent) metathesis. Is this real, or just a bit of linguistic
>>myth?
>
>It's true. Furthermore, I believe that "acs(i)an" is the original
>form. I recall checking this in the OED at one point, but can't do so
>(again) at the moment).
>
>Alice Faber                                             faber at haskins.yale.edu

Well, the OED on this one gives aiskojan (with a circumflex over the
o) as the Common Teutonic source and attributes the metathesis to the
Old English period.

Barbara Need
UChicago--Linguistics