Pronounce and Enunciate, Please

Maybe I'm a just a pompous snob when it comes to people's use of the English language. I just feel that as adults we should stop saying words like "liberry" and replace them with words like "library". There are far too many Americans out there murdering the English language every time they open their mouths. If you can't use the language without people squinting at you with their mouths open, perhaps you should consider a vow of silence. The exception to the rule would be the folks among us who learned English as a second language - kudos to them for comprehending the mish-mash of rules and contradictions that most of us born into English-speaking families seem to take for granted.

Now I'm not talking about folks with accents or drawls and I'm not hammering cultural differences. I'm talking about everyday people who say "ax" instead of "ask", "upmost" instead of "utmost", "probly" instead of "probably". Is it a learned behavior or is it genetic? Is it geographic or demographic? Is it laziness or... yes, I think it's laziness. Laziness and bad habits. Maybe no one took the time to explain to this person that the word is "PRErogative" not "PERogative". Maybe they've never read a book beyond "Green eggs and ham" so they have nothing telling them otherwise. Maybe they just don't care how child-like their speech sounds.

Some words that probably (not probly) shouldn't be part of our vernacular still make it in simply because we use the word enough for it to be generally accepted as a real word. "Ain't" comes to mind right away. It's not a proper word because it's a contraction of two words, one of which isn't an actual word to begin with. Because "are" + "not" = "aren't", should we assume that "ai" + "not" = "ain't"? That being said, I use the word "ain't" myself. Ain't that hypocritical?