Why are people in this country constantly using the word DRUG as the past tense for DRAG?

By analogy with strong verbs. I'll explain a bit.

Since Old English, verbs have fallen into two main classes. Weak verbs are those to which you add -ed (like "complain"); strong verbs are those in which the vowel changes (like "sing", "sang", "sung"). There are a few exceptional cases in which an entirely different verb supplements in one form (e.g. "go", "went"), and a few mixed cases like "keep", "kept" (which is really a special kind of weak verb).

Sometimes strong verbs become weak. This happens especially to uncommon verbs, but it happened even to the relatively common verb "laugh", which used to have a strong past tense.

Typically when new verbs are coined or borrowed into English, they're treated as weak. For example, no one uses "jove" as the past tense for "jive". However, sometimes new verbs become strong. For example, the past tense of "strive", which was borrowed from French, is "strove" by analogy with "drive".

And sometimes even native weak verbs become strong. This happens especially to verbs that look Anglo-Saxon in origin: That is, one-syllable long and ending in a consonant. Where I grew up in Wales, people used "jamp" as the past tense of "jump". And in many parts of the US, for quite a long time now (at least since the 19th Century) people have been using "drug" as the past-tense form of "drag".

It's all part of the natural process of language change. Some of the changes stick around and become standard (like "strove"); some of them don't. It doesn't reflect ignorance (for analogy to occur, you have to have a fairly good -- albeit subconscious -- grasp of the system as a whole).

This is a new country and a new language is being developed. This is a country where they teach 2 year olds to dial 911 before anything else, it has been a problem for many decades. Now the parents are scared of the kids so they let them do as they please. I remember back in the days if I messed up, oh man it was my butt, if I didn't do good in school I couldn't play outside for a while. Now you don't do good, Oh I'm taking your cellphone away, or ps3 those are commodities not neccesities, these parents don't know any better. The problem starts at home, if the kid has an unstable home, or the parents don't care, most likely they won't care about school. Now as far as drug being used, show me a grammar book that says that is the correct past tense of drag, teachers don't know everything they are there to guide the students, is the job of the student to learn.

The best answer is definitely dyneiddiwr's. You are running into somebody else's dialect and you think it's incorrect. In fact it's no more incorrect than the language of an Englishman who might ask you directions to the loo and the lift instead of the restroom and the elevator, just different. But "drug" vs. "dragged" is just as strong a marker of a regional or socioeconomic dialect.

From my own background in academic linguistics, what I'd like to add is that people can and do become strongly bidialectal. Among friends, they use one version of the language, and when they need to fit in with the upper commercial and social classes, they use another.

Actually, almost all of us w/ a wide range of acquaintances do this, but it's more obvious when the differences are bigger. Just listen to professional athletes, perhaps especially basketball players, in different interactions.

P.S. Be aware that when YOU say "dragged", it will tell a number of people who hear you that you believe you're too good for them (and that you're wrong about that). Not as much as if you started sounding like a gent off the BBC, but still ...

I would think that answering in 'slang' with the "Yeah, I've gotten a few of those" would be the most common answer. 'Received' is more professional, yes, and probably isn't good for the situation you're in. You can always look up online synonyms or in a thesaurus for 'get' or 'got' and see what comes up; maybe they have a better word for it that you'd rather use.

Yeah I know what you mean. It is annoying. And it's stupid stuff like that as to why the american language is the hardest thing in the world to learn. To darned many words that mean exactly the same thing.

You know you say potatoe I say potatoe.

You have dragged something thru the mud and I have drug it. Man that is so annoying, but I have learned to live with it. Maybe you should do the same.

Yeah and what's up with people using the instead of ye and why do I keep hearing all these youngsters saying goodbye instead of God be with you it's almost like the language has changed over the years or something.

It certainly is common throughout southern states. It's a "folksie" regional dialectic thing.

one word IGNORANCE