# Verbal tic that's starting to annoy me **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 11, 2008, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214 "2008-11-11T17:54:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/41 "2008-11-12T21:19:50Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > It was the four-word Texas lunchtime conversation: > > “Jeetyet?” > _“Naw.”_ > “Ya’awntu?” > _“A’ight.”_ I always thought proper response to “jeetjet?” was “sgweet”. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/42 "2008-11-12T21:50:20Z")
> [@Ponch8](#): > > This is very common among teenage girls and women in their 20’s. Usually they say “and I’m like…and she’s like…” rather than saying “and I said…” “I’m like” does not mean “I said,” as it does not imply any attempt at a verbatim recital of a prior statement. Rather, “I’m like” denotes an attempt to capture the flavor and general meaning–the gist, in other words–of something spoken earlier, while acknowledging that the phrasing is likely to vary significantly. I’m stuck in Data mode todar some reason. Can someone please reset my positronic matrix? Yes, I know I used contractions when supposedly stuck in Data mode. Bite me. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2008, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/43 "2008-11-12T21:56:35Z")
I say “Yeah, No…” all the time, but I also do it as the contraction of “You know” that Harmonious Dischord mentioned. Because I’m constantly having conversations like this" Caller: “So we can have the deal set on the 13th right? That’s not going to be a problem or anything is it?” Cluricaun: “Yeah, no there’s not going to be any problem with that at all.” So if people would stop asking multiple questions then I’d stop giving multiple answers to them. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Woo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7c8e57/32.png) [@Dr.Woo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Woo)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/44 "2008-11-13T00:57:02Z")
My mother in law starts nearly EVERY sentence with the word “no”. There’s no pause that would indicate a comma, she just says the word No as the beginning of every thought. For example, she might say, “No Daddy always said we should stay in Hawaii”, or “No I LOVE chocolate chip cookies”. I actually suspect it may be a contraction/shortening of “you know”, rather than an actual “No”. Either way, once noticed, it became extremely irritating to me, especially when she answers a (non yes/no) question with the no word, followed by a contradictory positive statement. ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/45 "2008-11-13T15:16:27Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > My wife does this, but we’re still married anyway. I have to fight the urge to say “can I get a summary of this conversation?” Change “and then she said” with “and she was like.” Then change “and I said” with “and I was like.” and you have an example of what it’s like talking to my 18 year old daughter. and, like you, it drives me nuts. This is where I usually say something along the lines of “Just give me the Cliff Notes version.” ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/46 "2008-11-13T15:26:28Z")
I work within distance of a man who stutters, but he doesn’t stutter the first word. He stutters the first half of a sentence. “Fred and Bill walked around the Fred and Bill Walked Fred and Bill walked around the block”. That and he doesn’t know how to gear a technical conversation to the right audience. For example in a status meeting where he could say something like “I’m updating our filewatcher program to scan for the new files”, he would instead say something like "I pulled the file watcher from the repository, and updated it to utilize the new libraries as some of the old ones were deprecated. I made the change to check for new file type and … " Oh, and add the sentence stuttering in there to make it a much more enjoyable conversation. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/47 "2008-11-13T15:27:26Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > A friend of mine got on a kick about “do do” As in, “No, don’t do that, I’ve tried it and it’s bullocks. But what you _do_ do is --” There’s nothing wrong (nor do I note particularly weird) about that. That’s the emphatic “do” followed by the main verb “do.” There’s a slightly different connotation to the sentence if you omit the emphatic _do_, and, in a sentence like that, where you have the second half of the sentence contradicting or correcting the first half, the emphatic _do_ is quite normal. What weirds me out is I had a German friend who would inappropriately stick in emphatic _do_s in her sentences, making it sound like she was always contradicting me or just really excited about everything. ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/48 "2008-11-13T15:32:24Z")
> [@spockerel](#): > > What really gets me is “a’ight”. I’m so surprised nobody has mentioned this. > It’s actually more work to say “a’ight” than it is to say “all right”. We don’t need a diphthong here! English has enough! > Really? This doesn’t drive anyone else nuts? and now for something completely different… [“Arrrr, it’s driving me nuts”](http://www.talklikeapirate.com/faq.html#nuts) ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/49 "2008-11-13T15:37:59Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > There’s nothing wrong (nor do I note particularly weird) about that. That’s the emphatic “do” followed by the main verb “do.” There’s a slightly different connotation to the sentence if you omit the emphatic _do_, and, in a sentence like that, where you have the second half of the sentence contradicting or correcting the first half, the emphatic _do_ is quite normal. It’s normal, but not the best choice, and it’s not entirely neccesary. A better word choice avoids the ugliness of the doubled phrase (and the preschool giggles) “do do”. Instead, try: “But what you \*can \*do…” or “But what you \*should \*do…”. A newpaper editor, of course, would just strike one “do” as redundant. " But what you \*do \*is…" Doubled words almost always have a better option. And it’s that that I’m trying to become more aware of in my own speech and writing. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/50 "2008-11-13T16:10:32Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > There’s nothing wrong (nor do I note particularly weird) about that. That’s the emphatic “do” followed by the main verb “do.” Or as Ira Gershwin said, “Do do that voodoo that you do so well.” Or was it Cole Porter. Maybe Irving Berlin. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/51 "2008-11-13T16:41:22Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > It’s normal, but not the best choice, and it’s not entirely neccesary. A better word choice avoids the ugliness of the doubled phrase (and the preschool giggles) “do do”. Instead, try: “But what you \*can \*do…” or “But what you \*should \*do…”. “Can do” and “should do” have slightly different meanings than “do do.” > [@](#): > > A newpaper editor, of course, would just strike one “do” as redundant. " But what you \*do \*is…" I disagree. The second “do” adds meaning. For example, I would not expect a newspaper editor to strike the “do” in a sentence like this: “What you don’t do is XXXXX; what you _do_ do, however, is YYYYY.” It’s not a redundant construction and it creates subtly different meaning than the sentences you’ve substituted above. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/52 "2008-11-13T16:46:27Z")
Another example: Q: I asked you to take out the trash. You didn’t do it, did you? A: I _did_ do it! Any problems there? No? Then why a problem with this: Q: I tell you to brush your teeth twice a day. You don’t do it, do you? A: I _do_ do it! ---
**Author:** ![simply\_cats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8c91f0/32.png) [@simply\_cats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simply_cats)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/53 "2008-11-13T18:04:44Z")
One of the women in my circle of friends has a verbal tic I find fascinating. Sprinkled liberally throughout her conversation, she says “nang.” Since I noticed it, I cannot _not_ notice it. It doesn’t seem to have any real rhyme or reason… It comes at the beginning of sentences, in the middle of words, at the end of thoughts- there is just no telling. However, you only need to listen to her talk for about 60 seconds to hear it at least once, though it is generally much more frequent. Very strange. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/54 "2008-11-13T18:16:11Z")
> [@jali](#): > > Not exactly a verbal tic, but I’ll use this opportunity to share my annoyance: The sentence finishers. > > Me: “I’m on my way to a party at P…” > SF: “Paloma’s house.” > Me: “Call me if you n…” > SF: “Need me”. > > Really irks me. Ha, I know one of these. It can be fun to mess with them, a la the old Two Ronnies sketch, by making sentences that appear to be heading one way but correcting them when they butt in with the obvious ending, because you were going to say something else. I also have a friend who repeats every sentence under his breath after saying it the first time. That’s quite funny. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/55 "2008-11-13T18:34:06Z")
> [@jali](#): > > Not exactly a verbal tic, but I’ll use this opportunity to share my annoyance: The sentence finishers. > > Me: “I’m on my way to a party at P…” > SF: “Paloma’s house.” > Me: “Call me if you n…” > SF: “Need me”. > > Really irks me. I can’t believe I read past this until now. I fight desperately against being a sentence finisher, and as such it’s always amusing to me to see how many people seem to rely on sentence finishers to help them out. I know people who literally don’t seem to think I’m doing my part in a conversation if I’m only saying the words that are in _my_ head. “Have you seen the new _Batman_ movie?” _“Yes, I have. I thought it was great.”_ “Didn’t you love the way he did the …” [pause] _“The way he did the what?”_ “The Joker!” _“Yeah, I thought Ledger did a fine job. I feel sorry that Eckhart isn’t going to get the recognition he deserves for his work as Harvey Dent, though.”_ “But he’s …” [pause] _“He’s what, I’m sorry?”_ (getting frustrated at my stupidity) “He’s dead!” _“Oh, Ledger. Yes, he is. It’s a shame.”_ “Don’t you think he should …” [pause] _“Don’t I think he should what?”_ (really getting fed up with my inability to read minds) “He should win the Oscar!” ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/56 "2008-11-13T20:55:04Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Another example: > > Q: I asked you to take out the trash. You didn’t do it, did you? > A: I _did_ do it! > > Any problems there? No? Then why a problem with this: > > Q: I tell you to brush your teeth twice a day. You don’t do it, do you? > A: I _do_ do it! 'Cause it’s ugly, that’s all. Same as everything else in the thread - none of it’s exactly \*wrong \*(unless you come from a prescriptivist background), it’s just ugly. Q: I tell you to brush your teeth twice a day. You don’t do it, do you? A: Yes, I do it! …works just as well without the ugliness. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/57 "2008-11-13T21:44:58Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > 'Cause it’s ugly, that’s all. Same as everything else in the thread - none of it’s exactly \*wrong \*(unless you come from a prescriptivist background), it’s just ugly. > > Q: I tell you to brush your teeth twice a day. You don’t do it, do you? > A: Yes, I do it! > > …works just as well without the ugliness. Well, I guess we’ll just differ on this. I don’t think your redaction works as well. It changes the meaning of the sentence subtly. I think the extra “do” adds meaningful emphasis. “Yes I do it” lacks the punch of “yes, I _do_ do it!” Out of curiosity, does “had had” also jump out at you? (And, from a prescriptivist point of view, “do do,” in the sentences I’ve given above, are not wrong.) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2008, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/58 "2008-11-13T21:51:19Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > (And, from a prescriptivist point of view, “do do,” in the sentences I’ve given above, are not wrong.) Ack. That should be “is not wrong.” I also meant to add that I don’t even think Strunk & White would have a problem with it. ---
**Author:** ![maladroit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f475e1/32.png) [@maladroit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maladroit)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2008, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/59 "2008-11-14T19:09:51Z")
I heard “yeah - no” on a Pledge commercial this morning, dunno if it was new, never noticed it before reading this thread yesterday ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2008, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214/60 "2008-11-14T19:21:04Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > Or as Ira Gershwin said, “Do do that voodoo that you do so well.” > > Or was it Cole Porter. Maybe Irving Berlin. [Your second guess was correct.](http://www2.uol.com.br/cante/lyrics/Cole_Porter_-_You_do_something_to_me.htm) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/verbal-tic-thats-starting-to-annoy-me/472214.md?page=4)