Words, usages, and phrases that annoy the shit out of you...

Haha, see I totally say Vim Venders, because I've never ever heard anyone pronounce those W's Anglo-style.

TORTURE.

twelfth is the only word that has ccvccc, i think. (/th/ is one phoneme)

"Schmo" is good. Amanda, I said "five-letter words." The thing that's interesting about it to me is that the vowel is at the very end and nowhere else.

"Up-side the head"

Anything with the word "munch" as the root.

when people type the words "sigh", or "shrug". If you went through the trouble to type 'shrug', maybe it kind of negates the whole fucking thing?

When people say or type "gotcha".

"Howdy"
"Okeedokee"

Any catchphrases from old comedies such as Wayne's World, Ace Ventura, or Austin Powers, will cause me to reconsider our friendship.

munchkin?

NOT! (as if.)

Oh, if this thread were about annoying internet words and phrases, I would have much more to contribute here.

But Americans don't say "on the weekend" (which strikes me as interchangeable with "at the weekend" in its Britishness); they say, "over the weekend."

no. it has a very specific origin, and came into use by members of a community who understood and referred back to that origin. it implies, if anything, disrespect for the hands-off approach the media takes with respect to the administration.

http://www.mcb.com.hk/online/image/upload/9/power_station.jpg

The claim is invariably a lie.

plus, i get a kick out of incorporating speech patterns into text, which is why i use "alla", "gunna", "I'ma", etc.

you're going too far, still

See, the thing is that he would probably like being called these names.

what term SHOULD be employed when referring to the current commander-in-chief?

Moving along, I've just read the 9-11 Commission Report, and can report that government employess pepper their speech with an unhealthy number of sports eulogisms. I've just returned the book to the library, so can't unpack all of the gems, but first and foremost, our Preznit (in defereence to N/A) expressing dissatisfaction with the early geopolitical politics: "I'm tired of playing offense, I want to play defense." Ha ha, I can just hear him saying that with a bit of a whine. Anyway, so many other CIA/FBI/Condi-types also reverted to these type of anologies when discussing world-wide matters of tremendous import. It made me happy that I haven't sought out a career as an operative.

Anyway the quite intelligent and eloquent Nabisco said:
If these students had spoken, say, Spanish, their teachers would have been given money and time to concentrate on bringing them up to speed with standard English.

Ahhh-hahaha. As a former teacher of both documented ESL students and non-documented "BVE" students I can say that teachers are provided with neither time and money to teach either. Perhaps, though, this is because I live and taught in Texas. . .

My ESL kids (and I had every single one of them in the school, me, the least experienced in the Language Arts dept.) were one of the six groups whose test performance determined our school's rating by the state. Said rating determined school funding and teacher raises. Some of the other groups included "at-risk" and "below federal poverty-line". I feel safe in asserting all of my "BVE" students fell into one of the latter two categories.

Bottom line. . .each group of students had the same extent of ground to cover in learning standard English. However the ESL students had a much greater cultural motive. They were largely first- and second-generation immigrants and becoming bilingual was very important to them. My African-American students rarely left the neighborhood unless it was to go to S1x Flags. They didn't really see the point in learning to make subjects and verbs agree since the only people they knew who talked that way were teachers and judges. And besides their cousin went to community college and she only got her GED.

America is a very soul-crushing place.

exactly!