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[Rusty]

"Nurses ask their patients that all the time."

[Luna Azul]

Originally Posted by poli

"ask that to their patients" sounds natural to me
ask their patients that sounds even better

Thank you!. So, my sentence, except for the typo was correct?

Originally Posted by Rusty

"Nurses ask their patients that all the time."

Yes.. that sounds better to me too. Thanks a lot!

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by poli

"ask that to their patients" sounds natural to me
ask their patients that sounds even better

To me, the first one sounds completely wrong, and the second is the only possibility. I can't think of an English construction where you would 'ask to' somebody, because with 'ask' you have a direct object, not an indirect one.

[poli]

In everyday American English you hear it. Other examples:
"How are you today?"
"People ask that all the time."
"Really? They don't ask that to me." (although people don't ask me that
sounds much better) I'm not sure the former would be considered correct in prescriptive grammar, although no rules that I'm running through my head indicate that it is wrong.

[Rusty]

The verb 'ask' can take both a direct object and an indirect object.

In this article, "I need to ask John a question" is treated as a special case, where the indirect object immediately follows the verb 'ask'. I admit this sounds much better. However, I'm quite certain I've heard the next sentence the article spotlights both ways. And, "He promised it to me," sounds much better than "He promised me it."

[Caballero]

Originally Posted by poli

In everyday American English you hear it.

I've never once heard it before now. In my idiolect, it is wrong.

[aleCcowaN]

Originally Posted by poli

"ask that to their patients" sounds natural to me
ask their patients that sounds even better

Examples in COCA:

Alan Colmes (FOX news): "In all fairness, you could ask that to anybody in any state about their senator or Congress person, and they probably wouldn't be able to answer that question."

Mrs W. Miller (wife of convicted rapists and murderer Wesley Miller): "You can ask that to my attorneys."

Senator Joseph Biden (in CBS Morning): "And ask that to Phil Gramm."

But "ask to ZZ that" gathers fifty times more instances within that corpus.

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by Rusty

The verb 'ask' can take both a direct object and an indirect object.

In this article, "I need to ask John a question" is treated as a special case, where the indirect object immediately follows the verb 'ask'.

Well, I read what it says, but I don't see the person being asked as an indirect object. Clearly, he/she is an indirect object in Romance languages (as far as I can tell) but definitely is a direct object in German (ich frage dich), and also Greek (erotao, eresthai) and Latin (interrogo), where verbs can have two direct objects in the accusative. Ultimately though, I don't suppose it matters how you actually define it in English.

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by aleCcowaN

Examples in COCA:

But "ask to ZZ that" gathers fifty times more instances within that corpus.

(cross-posting) That's interesting because the BNC has zero instances. (I couldn't get access to COCA to compare). "To ask to" is absolutely incorrect in BrE.

I reckon this is some distortion of English caused by the influence of Spanish in America.

[aleCcowaN]

Originally Posted by Perikles

I reckon this is some distortion of English caused by the influence of Spanish in America.

You took the words right out of my mouth. I was going to say that I expect English to have a more flexible word order in the future owing to the influence of Spanish.

If you look for people who don't give a darn about word order in English .... servidor, como decimos por acá .