[Ads-l] "One final ask"

[Laurence Horn]

I was watching a DVR of Obama’s farewell speech from last week.  Toward the very end (53 minutes in), he is reminding the audience, live and on TV, to continue to believe in not his ability to bring change but in ours, using these words:

"But for now, whether you are young or young at heart, I do have one final ask of you as your president, the same thing I asked when you took a chance on me eight years ago."

I had closed captioning on, and the captions for this read as follows

"...I do have one final act of you…+

Makes no sense and isn’t particularly grammatical, but I guess the closed-captioning program isn’t into nounifying.

LH

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