Originally Posted by marcop

I lived in NYC from 1981 through 1985, and I remember many of my black friends there said "axe" instead of "ask". It didn't bother me or (apparently) most of the people in my circle, and let's be honest, to bitch about how people of different races don't speak English "properly" is really nothing more than nativism at best or racism at worst. I speak a combination of RP and Cockney because of my upbringing, and now have an American overlay to those accents... so would I be just fucking with you?

English pronunciation varies widely not just from country to country, but from region to region. I grew up in London and to me many Northern English accents, particularly Manchester, Yorkshire, and Scotland sound like they were spoken by fuckwad retards. And after living in the US for 30+ years in NYC, the SF Bay area, and SoCal, to me accents from the deep South sound like they're spoken by fuckwad retards too. Maybe they're just fucking with me?