vestiges of gender and case in English

[Manifestor_of_Light]

1. People don't know about inflected verbs.

They think ALL verbs just put "-ed" on the end. This bugs me. The vowel changes.

The other day on a stand-up comedy show on TV, the guy said "Sticked" instead of "stuck". I have also heard "grinded" on TV instead of "ground".

They don't know about sleep-slept, keep-kept, choose-chose, leap-leapt, eat--ate-have eaten.

When I was in school we learned about "helper verbs" like has, have and had. Past perfect tenses are too difficult for these people, I guess.

And I'm no English major. I'm convinced that 90 percent of the population can't write with proper grammar and spelling.

And people who think "niggardly" means having to do with African-Americans. I knew a judge in St. Louis who lost her job over that.

I saw Bill Maher correct some stupid rock star, on his old show on ABC in the 90s, who insisted it had to do with black people.

And recently, we saw a man fired from an English language school for saying "homophones".

The bosses were quoted as saying "ESL students don't need to learn homophones". Excuse me? There, they're and their? Your and you're?

Gahhhhh!