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Their 60's car? Their 60's clothes?
Ah, perhaps you meant the non-possessive "60s"--or, even better, "'60s."
The more I listen to people, the more I realize they just don't understand language. They've memorized some facts and some dicta, and confuse that with understanding. Sometimes it's to make themselves big in their own eyes; sometimes it's because they want to engage in social climbing; sometimes they just take at face value, uncritically and blindly, what they're told. And sometimes there are other reasons.
To say much more requires a lecture, so I won't give one--just remember that if the role of language in a situation is to convey information and the information's conveyed without confusion, it's successful communication. Most of the rest involves social judgments of some kind.
When you hear something you find to be less than the Queen's English, run through the checklist:
1. Is it a speech error in the person's native dialect? (Dialects have norms and grammar just as much as what was written in a textbook for people who don't like how their peers speak in bars.) We all make mistakes.
2. If not, is the person aware of the conventional norm to be used, as well as the permissible range of variation in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary? Are you? In the absence of a Royal Academy, there's slippage between the two.
3. Does the person bear the appropriate norm? If not, why not? Too stupid to learn it? Told it wasn't important? Wasn't taught it, or taught it properly? The education system hasn't been clear, and in trying to not "oppress" AAEV speakers they've said pretty much any dialect is ok. The hypocrisy of having some non-standard dialects be good and some be bad was always pretty evident.
4. Is the norm being flouted on purpose? For instance, to target a specific audience. Obama uses AAEV elements in his speeches, but only to some audiences, and controls where clips form those speeches get aired. He flouts the "standard English" norm to show solidarity or speaks standard English in those cases to show education or authority. Like Blair, he's learned the norms for his target audience and uses them, but not everybody is as enlightened or motivated to manipulate. Regardless, if you're not a member of the target audience nobody probably cares what you think. It's always a good idea to know when you're irrelevant. I find it liberating.
5. While not relevant in this context, are you parsing it correctly? "Students is good" I find grammatical, but not in the sense "students are good". Instead, it shows the traits of lots of ellipsis, the "is" showing that "students" is part of a clause: "I have so many students." "Students is good." Perhaps it's a Steinfeldian kind of ellipsis, I don't know.
Sometimes not hearing something clearly matters, and not being familiar with the other person's pronunciation style matters: We may not pronounce the glottal stop that in others' speech starts words beginning with vowels; and we may not always make eth (voiced 'th')and 'v' sufficiently distinct in unstressed words; then "president to the United States" and "president of the United States" starts sounding awfully similar. Bringing me to (6) ...
6. Are you listening in good faith to what the speaker's saying, or mostly just sitting in judgment as a critic of other people's flaws?
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