( )For some speakers of American English, the word ask is pronounced [?ks], but the word asking is pronounced [?skI?]. It is interesting that in Old English the verb ask was aksian, with the/k/preceding the/s/. This means that a historical metathesis rule switched these two consonants, producing ask in most dialects of English. Metathesis is the phonological process that reorders segments, often by transposing two adjoining sound segments.