Besides using the wrong words or spelling them incorrectly, it bothers me when people use ghetto-speak. I remember the big trend that hit Dallas a few years back was to call the Dallas Cowboys football team 'da boys'. Or slang ghetto expressions like "who's da man?". Or the whole 'girlfriend' thing (pronounced guurl-frehhhhhhnd). There were serious debates a few years ago about introducing ebonics as a language of it's own and teaching it in school. I don't feel good about making the ignorance and laziness of others into a trend or making it an official part of our teaching program.

Beyond that I am bothered by the Southern, backwoods speech and pronounciation system known as bubba-speak. "Electric heckfire ma, we ain't got one whit o' sense between the whole golldarn lot o' us, do we??". I heard too much of that when I lived in East Texas a few years ago. There is nothing creepier than going to a backwoods Wal-Mart and observing the contestants in the freak show.

dw