And yet it still grates on my ears every time someone uses it in the singular. But the same things happens when someone ends a sentence with a preposition or splits an infinitive, and neither are those consider grammatical faux pas anymore.
They were “considered” as faux pas by people who were wrong.
No it doesn’t. That’s just something people made up.
> Where are you at
Sounds fine to me, and I’m a native English speaker.
> Why add the extra word
Language is an organic system that evolves mostly randomly. We can’t and shouldn’t expect it to be logically consistent.
To each his or her own I suppose :)