In the interest of full disclosure, allow me to offer this brief introduction.  The last several years resulted in serious degradation of my speaking as opposed to my writing.  My verbal grammar is now riddled with clichés, pedestrian colloquialisms, regional dialect, common vernacular, and other faults.  I do express such usage in writing when I’m being very relaxed and wish to communicate that feeling or when I intentionally invoke such parlance to develop a character or otherwise communicate that specific trait for content purposes.  They—I’ve yet to figure out who they are—but they apparently always say to writers: “Write the way you speak, the way you talk.”  Ugh.  I don’t think so.  Rather, I don’t think so for me.  I believe that axiom is correct for the vast majority of those who write.  I likewise believe it’s untrue for a minority capable of some degree of separation between the translation results from brain to mouth and from brain to writing instrument.  Of course, in that regard you’d be better judges than I would.  I say all that to focus this little diatribe on writing, not speaking.  To do otherwise would make me a hypocrite in such matters, and you know how much I loathe hypocrisy…

Grammatical humor always tickles me so.  In the spirit of pointing and laughing at breakdowns in native tongues in addition to drawing your attention to bizarre manifestations of the English language, here are some examples of my linguistic pet peeves and thoughts.

‘Irregardless’ is not a word.  Either use regardless or irrespective, but don’t conjoin the two in hopes of feeling exceptionally bright.  All of us actually laugh behind your back when you say “irregardless”; in truth, everything after that word is drowned by internal laughter and pointing.

A lot = many.  Notice it’s two words: ‘a’ and ‘lot.’  Allot means to distribute.  Alot is just lazy.

You’ve heard it before: “I before E except after C or when sounding like A as in neighbor and weigh.”  That rule breaks down if the word’s weird.

The abbreviation ‘e.g.’ is short for the Latin phrase exempli gratia, which means “for example’s sake” and is used to replace “for example.”  Since I don’t expect many to learn or remember Latin, remember ‘e.g.’ as meaning “example given” so you can use it correctly.

The abbreviation ‘i.e.’ is short for the Latin phrase id est, which means “that is” and is used to replace “that is to say” and similar phrases.  Don’t use ‘e.g.’ in its place (i.e., don’t be daft).

Your something does not belong to me.  You’re clueless if you think it does.  Besides, I can never tell which of my dumb possessions others are referring to when they say “your stupid.”  My stupid what?

Per se is Latin for “by itself” and is used to mean intrinsically, in itself, of itself, and by itself.  While it may be pronounced like “per say,” it certainly isn’t spelled like that.

Apostrophes denote conjunctions and ownership, not plurality (e.g., I got some MRIs done in the 1990s, but the MRI’s bed couldn’t support my fat ass.).

If someone’s in the throws of ecstasy, get out of the way so you don’t get hit by anything; meanwhile, I’ll be in the throes of laughter.

I stand with bated breath when others have baited breath.  I can’t stand fishy smells.

That woman’s cheeks were rogue, were they not?  They even snapped at me and left this rouge colored mark on my arm.

Et cetera does not abbreviate to ‘et.,’ ‘ect.,’ ‘ecc.,’ or anything other than ‘etc.’ with the period at the end.

If you intend to bring your bare bottom to bear on a bear who’s bearing a cub, the bear won’t bear it and you should bear in mind it’s a bear to run with your bottom bared.

‘Borne’ and ‘born’ can mean the same thing, but ‘born’ has more uses.  Never fear; you’re always right if you use ‘born’ only.

While you could hoard a horde of whored johns, I don’t know why you’d want to.  Wait.  Are they cute?

If you’re not buying a bag of cholesterol-raising food, you’re not going thru anything.  And I’m through going through that.

It’s definitely never correct to spell ‘definitely’ differently.

If there was ever a ‘D’ in your congratulations, you should have failed.

You can lie on the bed even if you lie about where you are, but only after you lay the book on the nightstand where I prefer it to lie.  Then lay your butt right here next to me and lie down.  By the way, did anyone tell the dog to lie down next to the bed?  Nevermind.  Let sleeping dogs lie even if he lays his big tush in my way where he likes to lie.  (To everyone’s credit, the use of ‘lay’ and ‘lie’ [and the myriad of combined confusing conjugations] is one of the most problematic speed bumps in English.)

I suspect you’ll have trouble trying to defuse the bomb if your expert’s knowledge is diffuse.

Fiery fire is the only kind I know.

Personally, I deplore the acceptance of ‘resume’ in place of ‘résumé.’  The former is a verb and the latter is a summary of something or a work history.  So resume updating your résumé even if you just got a new job.  It never hurts to be prepared.

He forwards the e-mail forward to his boss, but he doesn’t forward the e-mail forwards to anyone.  ‘Forwards’ is a verb, not a direction.

In the same light, ‘backwards’ is not American English (it is, however, proper UK English).  Just drop the ‘s’ and you’ll never have to worry about being wrong.

‘Anyway’ is a real word.  ‘Anyways’ is a regional thang, y’all, and you ought not use it cuz it ain’t right.

Things can be good and things can be well, but actions can never be good, only well.  This is another of those tricky English traps that lures us in with diversity and smacks us down with improper usage.  When you’re referring to something other than an action, use either good or well (e.g., “I’m well” or “I’m good” are both correct).  While there is a bit of a difference in their definitions when so used, they’re close enough to each other that it doesn’t adversely modify your point and being confused about which is correct won’t change what you mean.  When you’re referring to an action, however, always use well (e.g., “I’m doing well” is correct, but “I’m doing good” is not).  In the same spirit, the answer to “how are you doing?” should always be “well” and never “good” but the answer to “how are you?” can be either “good” or “well.”  That’s all well and good, eh?

Did the bank cancel your cancelled check?

‘Hisself’ is not a word.  You can talk about his self (referring to a male’s personality), and he can talk to himself, but let’s not try mashing the two together.

‘Themself’, likewise, is not a word.  Since ‘them’ is always plural and never singular, it’s always going to be about themselves.  Yourself/yourselves is the only exception since ‘your’ is both singular and plural based on context.

Leave it to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to perform tie raids in your closet while you launch into a tirade about the whole thing.

I think that’s about it for this edition of “can’t you fucking speak your native language?” as I’ve burned too many brain cells coming up with this list.  There are others, of course, and there are a myriad of spoken examples, but those don’t necessarily represent a lack of English skills as much as a lack of pronunciation and enunciation knowledge.