This has been bothering me for years. It has become the new “um”. I’ve let it slide for years, but after watching this guy who barely speaks English say it every other word, I must share.
And a close second is everyone who will reply trying to use “like” as much as possible.
What bothers you about it? Do you object to all discourse markers, or just this one? Is “um” more acceptable than “like”? Why?
I dislike it more than “um” because it’s trendy, and “um” has fewer letters, and probably less conscious. Slang becomes meaningless after a while, and eventually people will have to research what it means.
“So,” is the new one that bothers me.
Some people start almost every sentence with it. My mother-in-law uses it to start as sentence, to end a sentence, and as a sentence (it’s really quite hard to listen to)
Every other word sounds excessive, but I like to occasionally salt my speech with things like that because I like to sound a little less intellectual than I otherwise might seem like.
So, like, um I’d answer this question! OMG, lol, IKR.
(I hate them all, I use them all. Sorry)
Um, so I dbl.posted!
John, while Jim had had ‘like’, had had, like, "like, like’. Like, “like” had had, like, a better effect on the teacher.
What’s really bad is when you TRY (consciously and with malice aforethought) to avoid such things and thereby deliberately allow yourself to pause and think of the next word you WOULD have used if you hadn’t made that pause.
It can be very disconcerting to catch yourself falling into the trap. And it’s further distressing to get feedback (either directly or from observing how ill at ease the other participant(s) in the conversation appear to be) that make you want to go ahead and use those “crutch words” or their grunts and mumbles counterparts instead of being so obvious in NOT using them.
There’s not much worse than having somebody else go into a prolonged “ahhhhhh” just to fill in the verbal space that a real word or sentence might have done.
I have wondered (not all that seriously, of course) what the semaphore counterpart should be…(just a bunch of frantic flag-waving?)
Wonderful article!
By “for years” do you mean “since the 80’s”?
Buffalo buffalo like like buffalo Buffalo buffalo like.
Almost as common as the horribly overused ‘like’ is ‘i mean’. Some people are starting out their sentences with ‘I mean’ and it makes very little sense.
Yeah, it’s right up there with feathered hair and leg warmers.
People who start sentences with um, so, or like, should be permanently silenced.
A few years back a story on NPR pointed out that if you watch an older movie, like 1970s or older, the way the characters speak sounds a little bit “square” to modern ears, at least to people in my age group. Even the young teenage characters. The reason for this is because they’re not saying “like”!
Elizabeth Warren does this. Makes me a little nuts. But they each have their particular verbal tics and hers is no worse than the others.
I’m another who dislikes excessive likes. Most annoying when someone is describing their conversation with another person:
“So he goes, like, ‘Do you get what I’m saying?’ And I’m like, ‘Are you trying to tell me like his cat is all bald and stuff?’ And he’s like, ‘Noooo!! Get away with your bad self, dude!’”
Ugh!!
Close second: “Basically.”
Yeah, I’m not too crazy about the quotative “like”, but language changes.
1981 called and wants its rant back. (I see Miller beat me to it, but, like, whatever.)