What are your pet peeves re English usage?

They sound okay to me too.

I, myself, prefer, "There ain't no bananas on the table. Where in hell did they go?"

Did YOU eat all the bananas? Again?

Not archaic, no! Neither you, nor the structure.
But they might be used differently - for emphasis you may say one or the other form. In ELT books that I'm writing for Chinese students we teach haven't any before have no, as it happens.

White folks who speak Ebonics. That's a pet peeve of mine.

Say what, cousin? You been peevin' like Steven. Wassup with that?

Word up, Merry Andrew. Don't be a playa hata.

Now that the games are here.......ath-a-lete instead of ath-lete.

Two things that people say which just grate on my nerves:

*Axed (instead of asked)

*Joolery (instead of Jew-el-ry)

I'll take issue with the "jewellery" one.

I think I say it more like the first of your examples, Fortune. It's got three syllables, of which the last is "-ery".

But maybe I'm old-fashioned.

A lot of these things seem to be a matter of fashion. For example, medicine seems to be accepted as "med-sin", i.e. with the middle syllable missing.

Yup, both 'Jool-err-ee' and 'med-is-in' are US inventions, not being an American myself, it just sounds wrong when I hear them on the lips of my fellow countrymen.

It seems to me joolery is the pronunciation of someone who has seen it written jewellery. Do Americans with their funny spelling ever say joolery?
I think McT that you and I say 2 syllables, joolry. How lazy is that?
Medcin was how I was brought up to say it but again, the influence of spelling seems to be bringing in that middle syllable.
I protested that the British don't say CONtribute, but having said it I am forced to eat my words because I must have heard 10 instances of it on the radio and TV, and not one single conTRIBute as it should be/used to be (same thing, isn't it?)

My dictionary tells me that both jewelry and jewellery are acceptable ways of spelling the word but it only gives me the one way of saying it, the way I always have.

Contribute, that's a funny one. I don't think i've ever heard anyone say CONtribute, that first 'o' is supposed to be a neutral vowel. Doesn't it have the same Latin root as the word tribute?

Take time to listen to radio 4 today, fortune - it is extraordinary how many times CONtribute comes up! The stress of course changes in CON tribUtion and people seem to be affected by that. Stresses in words do seem to change with fashion, don't they? Harassed used to be HARassed but has been Americanised to harASSed (who decided to introduce an ASS?).

I looked up HarASS, turns out it was the Scottish who brought the donkey into it.

I don't think I'll have much luck with radio 4, I live in Melbourne!

Oh! So maybe the Aussies don't have the same wish to CONtribute a bad pronunciation to the language!
You can enlighten me about one thing - in normal Aussie speak, people seem to say:
"If I HAD'VE known you were coming, I'd have baked a cake'.
Is this hypercorrection?

It could be, I've not thought about it before. It is said now and again here, but in general the Australian accent tends to lean towards the absolute laziest way of saying anything, so it's more likely a person would say, "Fide known you were coming, oida baked a cake." So yes, we are more than willing to contribute bad pronounciation to the language, just as long as it's in the name of comfort and ease.

Name a language where that HASN'T happened! The ultimate seems to be French where augustum became août, so short that they have to say le moi d'aoüt and hodie became hui so we get aujourd'hui!
Let stalk Strine is a compelling book!

Heh heh, I've never read it myself but I've heard good things.

Afferbeck Lauder