Sorry I was unable to participate in the flurry of exchanges about language. I was busy. Here is a belated contribution, a propos of nothing.
On Monday I dipped into a bound volume which collected "The Penny Magazine" of 1835. On January 17 that magazine published a summary of a work by Dr. Samuel Pegge, under the headline, "Anecdotes of the English Language." The argument was that, "the great majority of what are called 'cockneyisms' are not, as is commonly supposed, corruptions of the language, but were formerly in use among good writers, and have been retained by the Londoners after the literary and the refined have given them up." To me the most interesting examples considered in the piece involved what I thought was an African-Americanism transposition, "axe" for "ask":
Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, wrote to her son Henry VII, "As herty blessing as y can axe of God..."
Dr. John Clerk wrote to Cardinal Wolsey, "The king axed after your Grace's welfare."
David Ritchie, Portland, Oregon ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
