God damn, has that story stuck with me.

Or you could try talking the way you talk, let other people talk the way they talk, and maybe not deride people for speaking a non-prestige dialect.

aks/ask has gone back and forth since at least old english (ascian/acsian). It is a purely dialectical variance, and a person isn't 'wrong' or 'less educated' for using it. Languages develop and evolve, and no one dialect is more correct than any other one. Which is why you weren't declining your nouns for case or…

The Portuguese r is an alveolar tap. In English, the /t/ and /d/ sounds are often pronounced the same way when between two vowels.