pedant's corner

Good news everyone! I found my GPS, lurking under a pile of clothes on the "pile of clothes chair" in my bedroom. And I can also report that my wife was gracious in the face of my stupidity.

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

WHAT GRINDS MY GEARS IN THE SPEAKING OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

I really have to get this off my chest. What follows is a series of examples of how even quite intelligent people mangle the language today.
1. "Sickth" The way people, especially sports commentators for some reason, pronounce "sixth". I swear the other day I heard someone on Eurosport pronounce "six" as "sick" I hope I misheard, though I fear I did not.
2. "To be honest" To be honest, this irritates me considerably. People put this in before the start of nearly every sentence, which then, when they do not, invites one to enquire whether their last statement was actually dishonest, because it didn't come with the prefix in question.
3. Unnecessary extra words. There are several examples of this, eg:
a) "the reasons why" Why add the why? To give a reason IS to say why in the first place.
b) Return back (or deliver back) the back is irrelevant. You return to a place or you go back there. Return back is not necessary.
c) I intend ON doing something. why the on? what's the point?
d) the patient self discharged himself, or the patient self harmed herself. I mean, this is a no brainer if I ever saw one, but I've heard many nurses and indeed doctors say this. Idiots!
e)Very unique. Unique means "the only one" Now tell me, how can you be "very the only one"? This is in such common use in America you could put it in your PhD thesis on English grammar and it wouldn't raise an eyebrow. Why not?
f) irregardless. A word that does not exist in the English language. I recently heard an eminent consultant use the "word" 3 times in the same lecture, and when I challenged him about his use of a "non word" afterwards he couldn't even remember saying it. Gah!

Thanks for your forbearance. I feel much better now.