Yes.
Pretty much any usage goes in English, provided a critical mass of speakers/writers do it. “Newkyouler”, “real-a-tor”, “mere” (for mirror), and “Q-pon” are all totally acceptable now. I get that grammar is supposed to be descriptive not prescriptive, but I still get irrationally annoyed by this. This is especially true when the “child” pronunciations supplant the pronunciations formerly used by most adult native speakers.
It’s all right for you lot - we get all your Americanisms over here from TV shows. Don’t have realtor yet (we have much grander ‘estate agents’) but we do have noo for new and many others.
As an aside - why do Americans have so much trouble saying ‘squirrel’ and ‘mirror’? It isn’t **that **hard.
We’re so busy and important that we refuse to let extra syllables slow us down.
Why is it that when people change way they dress, we speak of the latest fashion, but when people change the way they talk, we speak of the latest error?
I never noticed the squirrel thing; I say “skwurrul”, with the second syllable definitely there even if its vowel is a schwa. How is it pronounced in other accents?
If no one, except perhaps for a few cultural anthropologists, can understand why people wore leisure suits and a big perms, it’s no real loss. But if it takes a highly trained linguistics scholar who specializes in 1980s English to read a book or document that was written in the 1980s, I would say that is a great loss.
I think the commonality of these examples is that the root ends in a “k” or “g” (or “ng”) sound, putting your tongue in a place where it’s slightly difficult to move it right to a “d” sound. So, we tend to go with the “sing sang sung” pattern for these. “Irregular” might not be the best term for things which follow a well-established pattern; perhaps better to use “non-default” for these, and save “irregular” for really weird ones like the suppletive “is be was” thing.
All languages are designed to evolve. I personally think that the most common spelling should be the prefered spelling. Therefore our dictionaries should be re-written to include b4 as before, u as you, etc.
or “drug” is the new “dragged”
Yep.
It’s better to be well-hung than well-hanged.
Err…it’s Germans that can’t say squirrel or mirror.
Perhaps, but “irregular” is the term for these types of verbs. Some verbs are more irregular than others, but “to be” is a particularly irregular example. Anyhow, there’s plenty of counterexamples I could think of, especially with “sneaked/snuck.” Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other verbs ending in “eek” that form their past or participle with an “uck”. Peak, leak, reek, seek, tweak, etc., all just take regular “-ed.” The “hanged/hung” has a lot more support with the past tenses of -ing verbs like “sing” and “ring,” but all the -ang verbs I can think of take a regular past (see: bang, gang [up on], twang, and boomerang.)
That’s what I guess seems a little oddball to me. What you posit seems to be the most logicial association that’s going on, some sort of mental analogy with similar verbs like sing/sang/sung, although “hang” is a present tense, not a past tense, so to use “hung” for the past instead of the past participle is a little different. So, instead of the sequence being “hing/hang/hung,” it’s “hang/hung/hung.” I can’t think of any other verbs that take “-ung” for their simple past other than “hang,” which is another irregularity about it so, in that case, it’s even more irregular than sing/sang/sung, as it doesn’t follow a usual pattern.
Good points. Sounds like you’d enjoy Pinker’s book Words and Rules, if you haven’t already done so.
I’m very familiar with Pinker’s work. 
Whenever I hear an American say squirrel, they pronounce it Skwerl. Maybe it is the ones with German ancestors?
Oddly Googling: “Americans” can’t pronounce squirrel, only produces a list of Germans… Grrr
Well put.
Is it the initial vowel that is bothering you, or the absence of a second syllable? In my dialect, “squirreled” rhymes with “world.” Both sound like they might have a schwa in the “rld” cluster, but it’s hard to tell. Merriam-Webster online shows both pronunciations with a “ər(-ə)l” cluster, so I’m assuming the (-ə) stands for a swallowed or implied schwa or something (not as an optional one, as the second pronunciation for “squirrel” is the same as the first pronunciation, exception without the parentheses around the schwa.)
“The latest fashion”? Who uses that expression anymore?
But that’s manifestly not the case. People always complain that any change to language will lead to complete incomprehensibility, but anyone fluent in English can read contemporary works or works from the 80’s or even slangy 1930s detective novels with equal ease. Twain and Dickens use 19th century eye dialect for their characters and I can read it with little difficulty. Shakespeare is only a minor challenge. I don’t know about you, but I can read works that use the Oxford comma or not, that end sentences with prepositions or not, that use “hopefully” as a sentence modifier or not, that use British or American spelling, that put commas and periods inside or outside quotation marks or even eschew quotation marks for dialog entirely. I can understand singular “they” and “ain’t” and “snuck” and “youse” and “y’all” and “thee” and “thou” and “ca’n’t” and “to boldly go” and “cromulent” and “fugeddaboudit” and “Where to, guv’nuh?” and “l8r” and “1337” and “ok.” I even know why “cherry” and “pea” are wrong and why the Romans grew corn but the Indians didn’t.
And before anyone suggests otherwise, I’m not saying that there is no such thing as errors in language or that all usages are equal. I’m saying that using slang in a business document (or any other linguistic solecism) is more like wearing a Hawaiian shirt to a business meeting than like thinking 2+2 is 5 or that Columbus sailed in 1942.
In the future, all words will be synonymous.