Speech Patterns

"Speak the speech I pray you, as I did teach it to you, trippingly on the tongue." -- Shakespeare

Grammarians tell you what should be.
Linguists describe what is.

When in doubt, rephrase the sentence.

   You learn your language from your parents, but your dialect from your peers, whoever you choose them to be. You cannot choose your parents, but you can select your peers.
   That's why children of immigrants speak English in an American dialect. They learn basic stuff from their parents at home, but once they are old enough to play with other kids on the street and go to school, they alter their speech patterns to conform with phrasings they feel are more appropriate.
   Moreover, youths may well change their dialect several times as they mature. At first, they adopt the speech patterns of the other kids on the street. Then, they may emulate a favorite teacher or other adults. Or they may continue to follow their parents' dialect, especially if that is a regional or social dialect also heard in the neighborhood and in school.
  To a linguist, all dialects are equal. They all enable its speakers to communicate easily and help to identify the group.  Therefore, as a youth wants to become a member of a group, a youth will adopt that dialect.
   Some teachers try to suppress some dialect or speech pattern as being "incorrect," but that is often a useless effort. 
   Here's an example: The sounds represented by the letters T and D are often dropped from the middle or the endings of words, even among many so-called professional users of English in America. Thus, we hear the word "dentistry" spoken as "dennisry." Or the TV network news program "20/20" comes out "Twenny-twenny." And the casino resort on the New Jersey Shore loses all its T sounds and becomes "Allanic Siddy" as the T sound in "city" is vocalized and becomes a D sound.
   This is not to say such pronunciations are wrong. Rather, this merely points to what is part of the regional or social dialect in the South Jersey-Philadelphia region.
   Moral: Pronounce as you will, but remember that this identifies you as a member of a social, regional or professional group. The important thing is to know which group you want to be identified with.
   (Note: A grammarian would insist that sentence should be "... to know with whom you want to be identified." It is grammatically correct, but clumsy. Moreover, when a reader stops to puzzle out which is "correct," the writer has stalled communication. Don't go there. When in doubt, rephrase. As someone once said, "A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with." Or as Winston Churchill put it, "That is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.")
   And to build group identification, you will hear various people, especially politicians, change the strength of their dialect depending on their audience. A Southern candidate at a rally in Alabama or Texas may be easily understood by those in the audience, but to a Boston or New York City cab driver the speech may be incomprehensible.