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From New York City, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language. I'm John McWhorter, and this week I want to talk about linguistic pet peeves. Not yours, but mine. Because people often ask a linguist. We linguists are seen as so permissive about what are widely seen as language errors. We're permissive,

we're benevolent. And we're often asked, well, what bothers you? Do you not like any of the

things that you hear people saying all the time? And the answer to that question, at least from me,

is, of course, there are things that I don't like hearing in terms of people's grammatical

constructions, etc. But we consider it our jobs to work against our feelings like that and think of them

as understandable but unfortunate biases, because, as I've often tried to get across on this show,

scientifically, there is no

case for the idea that someone who's speaking fluently and with nuances somehow doing something

wrong. Our sense of what's wrong, unless we're talking about an outright grammatical error

that nobody else makes, is conditioned by sociological and socio-historical randomnesses.

So, what about my pet piece? What do I not like? I don't like spending long times cooped up

in a closet as I am now. But other than that, what are some things that people say that I can't stand?

Well, let me share my main

one with you. And it's something that I don't get the feeling most people even notice, but

this drives me crazy. It's like an eyelash in your eye, and people do it a lot. And so it means

that I have something to be handily annoyed about all the time. Here is a clip from the slightly undersung live-action Disney movie from the 60s, The Happiest Millionaire.

Here is Fred McMurray talking, and just listen to him.

You're not going to hear anything at first, probably, but just listen to what he says.

I was a sickly child mr duke as

and then when i was 10 i came down with typhoid fever well that's it they said he'll never make

...