I don’t know if you have the experience of being within earshot of teenager’s street slang, but the use of the word “be” functions as the only conjugation of the verb “to be” in many of their conversations.

Being a lover of English grammar, I find this deeply disturbing.  Maybe this is because I hear it spoken in classrooms, not just the hallways.  I fear that good grammar is dying and I am already grieving it’s demise.

I can easily see why teachers don’t correct students in class.  They would never have time to teach.  It is that pervasive.  And the thing that makes it worse, is that kids are mostly unaware of the fact that they are doing it.  I have experienced this.

One day, while working in a middle school, I corrected a girl in the hallway.  She turned and faced me directly and said, “But that don’t sound right!”  “That doesn’t sound right,” I replied.  She looked so confused, and I thought, “No wonder she doesn’t speak correctly.”  She never hears it.  

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am not saying that the teachers speak like the students.  It’s just that many of these kids don’t hear it at home or with their friends and the voices of the teachers aren’t as “loud”, so to speak.  They hear it alright.  I think that they just see it as a foreign language of sorts, and ignore it.  They are not really listening.  They are just hearing it peripherally.  It’s like background noise.

What worries me the most, is the fact that American English may be seen as an inferior language in the future.  I love the English language.  It is so rich and has it’s origins from so many different cultures.  It is spoken, albeit in different ways, in many different countries.  And I love that too.

There is even something to be said for slang because it can be very creative and every generation has it’s own.  It is something we can identify with from our own adolescence. But slang and dialects should be seen for what they are.  They should only be associated with a certain time or place or group.  

When “be” is used instead of “am”, “is”, or “are” in a sentence, it just sounds ignorant.  And that’s what bothers me the most.  Time will tell us whether this will carry into future generations.