Two of the guys above are genuine rednecks, but one
is a kid from New York who was attending his first party with
rednecks. The kid from New York has reached some conclusions
about the cultural and educational level of his companions.
Unfortunately,
far too many people I have encountered around Birmingham are careless in their use of the
English language and, even worse, seem unaware of how backward this carelessness makes them
appear. Examples of this sloppy use of language are all around us
every day. Confusing "lie" and "lay" as in "I'm going to go home and lay down," using
the the wrong case with pronouns as in "him and her went to the football game," confusing
singular and plural nouns as in "his license were at home instead of in his wallet," mixing up verbs
like "sit" and "set" as in "come on in and set a spell" -- these and many other language blunders
are used by all sorts of people that we encounter every day in Clay, Calera, East Lake, Hoover,
Homewood, Brook Highlands, and many another neighborhood. Sadly,
however, many of these folks who commit such errors don't realize how bad these mistakes make
the blunderer look. Perhaps they are unaware that other people like potential employers
or potential customers are annoyed by such clumsiness. Perhaps they are unaware that making
lots of such errors really sends out the message that the speaker is not very familiar with proper
English and is probably not very well educated about anything else either. Surely they must not be thinking what they are doing when they butcher the language so
badly that listeners think they are ignorant and illiterate boobs. Actually
there are so many poor users of English around Birmingham that visitors to our city often jump to
the conclusion that we are a backward and poorly educated bunch of rednecks, and that's really a
problem for all of us.