Language of the Locals

I am not a grammarian though I secretly wish I were. I make plenty of mistakes communicating via the Mother Tongue. However...I have been exposed to so much mangling of English here in the upstate of South Carolina that I fear it may infect my speech and that I could be in danger of blurting out, "He has went" or some other atrocity. Granted I don't hang out with the elite. I do spend a good bit of my time with people who are mentally ill, homesless, and drug addicted, and if they are from here, especially the part of the county called the "dark corner" where many of our patients come from, they cannot put two words together without a serious verbal violation. And some of my co-workers, those who are local, do the same. Sadly it seems to be the norm. I was talking with a woman patient last night who was obviously guilty of these transgressions. During our conversation she informed me her sister was an English teacher. Similarly I once had a student who murdered the English language who had an English professor for a mother. I got up the nerve to ask her why in heaven's name did she talk the way she did. In a nutshell, I perceived they do not want to betray their culture. Even the professor/mother talked like a local when she was at home, the student told me. Cringing, I try to block out as much bad grammar as I can. My burning question is this: Is the conjugation of verbs not taught in school anymore? When I have students who use the local lower class dialect, I want to tell them that people outside of their culture will think less of them by the way they speak. Yet I keep quiet for fear of being thought judgmental or insulting or politically incorrect. I could go on. I could rant about the gross yet proudly spoken mispronunciations, but will end my local language observations here.