To clarify, when I said “very few native Americans… do so”, I meant very few pronounce the /t/ in “metal” like the one in “metallic”; I didn’t mean very few native Americans “try to be consistent”.
(Although consistency in this sense seems to me an arbitrary goal. What about the second syllable of “metal” and “metallic”? Why is it that you don’t try to be consistent about those?)
Or, say, “atom” and “atomic”, or “line” and “linear”, or “reside” and “residual”. I mean, there’s no dearth of such examples. There’s nothing wrong with “being consistent”, but there’s nothing wrong with the opposite either; it’s not something we have to try to avoid.
Yeeah. I’m done here. When you start claiming regional accents aren’t ‘proper’, I know not to waste my time further.
I had a friend who insisted it is wrong to pronounce the ‘t’ in ‘truck’ with a ‘ch’ sound. She insisted that she herself would never say “chruck,” that she would pronounce the ‘t’ sound “properly.”
Then she’d demonstrate. And she’d pronounce it ‘ch.’ We’d call her on it, and she’d insist we were hearing wrong.
If someone actually did pronounce “truck” with a t instead of a ch, they would sound a little strange to everyone else.
If someone actually pronounced the “t” in “metal” unvoiced and aspirated, they would a lot strange to everyone else, and probably to themselves as well.
I do have a prof who it would not suprise me if he pronounces it this way. It wouldn’t suprise me because he clearly enunciates each syllable of each word he speaks as though the syllable were an entire accented word itself. It souds really weird.
-FrL-
Compare the number of people who completed 9th grade, and their demographics, 150 years ago as compared today, and you will see that what you mean is not illustrated by what you’ve referenced.
-FrL-
You say you are upset by meanings becoming lost in lazy speech. Then you say you really dislike redundancy. But redundancy in language generally functions precisely in order to avoid loss of meaning, (transmit the message more than once, and you’re more likely to transmit it successfully,) and it is certainly not a kind of lazy speech–quite the oppostite, as redundancy requires more effort than non-redundancy.
On the other hand “With au jus” bothers me as well. But not because I think it means “with with juice.” (It doesn’t. It means “with a particular type of gravy.”) Rather it bothers me simply because it seems like an error to use a phrase meaning “with juice” in its original language as a noun simply meaning “juice.” It’s the kind of thing that might strike a native speaker of French in the same way “Engrish” strikes me. I chuckle at Engrish in part because it seems to me someone in Japan has made a mistake about English. Similarly, I wince at “au jus” because it seems to me that someone has made a mistake about French.
It’s an almost purely aesthetic reaction. I want people to avoid this kind of mistake, and to avoid usages that result from this kind of mistake. But there may be people who don’t care about this kind of mistake, or about avoiding usages that result from this kind of mistake, and I can not think of any finally compelling rational considerations in favor of saying my taste here is the “right” taste. It’s just my taste, and one I think a lot of people share, even if they haven’t brought it to bear on the “au jus” usage (yet).
-FrL-
According to whom, other than you?
I don’t have cites in hand, because this is just something I learned in my linguistics courses several years ago, but the relevant wikipedia article has good leads for you.
-FrL-
A related story from bash.org
Sarcasm messes with all kinds of rules. 
On a related note… could everyone start practicing saying “realtor” correctly? It’s like acid in my ears when I hear educated people say “reeLAtor” gah! I know those double vowels are tricky, kinda nuclear, if you know what I mean, but you could try.
You need a cite for that? It seems pretty self-evident to me.
I never hear that one from anyone over the age of 6. And since those 5 and younger are used to having their sentences corrected, it isn’t a problem.
“Joanie and myself read the proposal” is my nails on a chalkboard phrase.
Really? I hear it all the time. Along with the infinitely worse (once we’ve established that Joanie is involved) “Me and her went to the mall.” Blech.
Ditto. It’s a common construction around here. So common, in fact, that I don’t even flinch when hearing it and so common that when I speak to my peers who grew up in this area, I will routinely say things like “Me and Joe went bowling last night.” I know it’s not what might be considered standard English grammar, but I don’t care. This is how people I grew up with talk, and it sounds perfectly natural to me. My speech changes depending on what group I’m talking to. Oddly enough, the “Joe and myself” construction does grate on my ears. It all depends what you’re used to, I suppose.