The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #89383   Message #1686340
Posted By: Windsinger
06-Mar-06 - 08:15 AM
Thread Name: BS: Etymology, Semantics
Subject: RE: BS: Etymology, Semantics
"It don't make no never mind."

This one may actually be Southern or Appalachian in origin; my maternal family uses it all the time.

While continental Africanisms may have trickled down into modern Ebonics, Southern country-dialect definately had an impact as well.
Good example: "ax" / "ask". This is something rural English speakers would get dinged for all the time, in America AND England (ex: Tolkien uses the phrase in a snippet of Samwise's poetry, just to make him sound really country-fried.)

It is, in fact, an Old English word: acsian, that was used commonly alongside ascian. Both were recognized dialectal variants for the word "ask".

(Around Shakespeare's day the "sk" form of the word beat out the "ks" one, and became more or less standard.)

Slán,

~Fionn

www.geocities.com/children_of_lir