My top six

Maybe it's living in Alberta, or maybe it's endemic, but my ears ache constantly listening to people talk.  Their speech patterns and grammar are atrocious.  It's like chalk on a blackboard and I have yet to get used to it.  My top six, not necessarily in this order, are:

• Answering a question with "so".  What is this?!?!  Some "expert" is asked a question on the radio or television and he/she starts out with, "So, I think......"  It's beyond the pale.  "So" means "therefore" or "very".  The dictionary gives many examples, but none (yes, "none" is singular, to the puzzlement of many) includes the beginning a sentence.  Whoever started this abomination should be jailed. 
• Dropping one's "g"s, as in "comin', goin', talkin', walkin'".  It is actually a dialect here and even people raised to never do it, do it after living here awhile.  It is unbearably hard to listen to and belies any college or university degree the speaker may have earned. 
• The up-lilt of the voice at the end of a sentence.  This is not how one speaks.  The voice is supposed to drop at the end of a sentence, not rise.  The only time it rises is when a question is posed.  I believe this came from 'Valley Girls', but now we're sadly surrounded and bombarded.
• The incorrect use of "would have".  So many people misuse this conditional tense.  They say, "If I would've known, I would've....."  No.  Wrong.  It's, "If I had known, I would have...."  One too many "would've"s in there.  Stop it please.
• The repeating of the word "is".  Why do people say, "The thing is is....."  Listen for it, it's everywhere.  Even worse?  "The thing was is....."  It has to stop, but I know it won't.
• Ignorance of the three tenses of every verb.  It's "go, went, gone....and...take, took, taken....and...speak, spoke, spoken...."  Most people completely ignore the last tense.  Here's a classic, "If I would've went....."  That one actually combines two no-no's.  A real delight.  We used to play a car game with our kids (before handheld devices ruined everything) wherein I would throw out the present tense and the kids would have to give me the other two.  It was a lot of fun and as a result, they know their verbs.  Even ones such as "strive, strove, striven".  That's a beauty.

As a bonus, there's "hung" and "hanged".  Pictures, laundry, bunting are "hung", but people are "hanged".  Don't ask me why, that's just the way it is.  But do you think the general public knows the difference?  You expect it on the CBC, but even on BBC you will here, "Joe was hung yesterday."  Sad.

Ah well, I guess I will have to carry on and "bear, bore, borne" whatever I hear.