Ok, I’ll be the first one to admit that I never went to English school and maybe I shouldn’t have such a strong opinion, English is my second language after all. I am self-taught. I learned English from reading, watching TV, movies, hanging out more and more with English people when I was younger, then moving to an English province and city and finally working and living in English. I make lots of mistakes, but I can carry a conversation or write a story without repeating the same god-damned fucking words over and over again.
This morning, while in a line up for my coffee, I was forced to listen to the self-indulging diatribe of a young woman to her uninterested female friend:
Girl 1: So he was like you shouldn’t have said that, and I was like well I did so he was like why did you feel you had to do this and I was like she needed to know and he was like that’s your opinion I don’t think she needed to know and I was like if he’s cheating on her she should know and he was like maybe he was just seeing what else was out there you have no proof he was cheating on her because you saw him talking to someone else in a bar and I was like HE WAS KISSSSSSSSSSING HERRRRRRR!
Girl 2: (looking at the food on the counter, dazing away, not really listening)
Girl 1: So he was like he probably had too much to drink and I was like well he shouldn’t have kissed her and Tracey needed to know and he was like she wasn’t even there, she knew he was going out with his friends and I was like…
Barista: How can I help you?
Me: Venti Mild and 2 aspirins (with my eyes rolling to point at the airhead behind me)
On my quick walk to the office following this, I couldn’t help but wonder why young people today cannot tell a story anymore without sounding like idiots and repeating the same thing over and over… I understood the gest of it, she wanted to tell this girl the guy had kissed another girl but did we really have to suffer through the “and I was like and he was like and I was like and he was like and I was like and he was like and I…..”? What’s happened to English? Have American movies and tv shows really made the younger generation that way or have they just become lazy “raconteurs”.
Like, I take heart that her friend was bored. Might be evidence that every generation has, like, dumb folks who never know when to stop, y’know, blathering.
This form of like has been used for decades and, as you cite here, merely introduces a direct quote. You may not like it, but it isn’t “wrong.” (Or the thing you may not like is the number of repetitions. Then again, she was recounting a conversation.)
There are any number of articles and Web pages on this and other “annoying” and “incorrect” uses of like.
Now, is Dead Robot gonna show up and say I’m just Joe being Joe, or maybe will he take my linguistics degree into account?
Dave: yep, agreed
Joe: DeadRobot will do whatever the fuck he wants, he’s not my defender but definitely knows how I feel about your annoying comments. And if you don’t like it, you have another blog not to visit. Like.
You can see why I married him.
I always said that we ought to have such a thing as the “grammar police” but then I always get told off for being a snob (or at times, a “grammar nazi.”)
It’s interesting for me, because I teach young university students and even with just no more than 5 years of difference between them and me, language-wise, the generational gap makes itself felt very prominently. What strikes me is how the various media of communications are changing. For many of the younger folks, narrating a story has to take the form of the 120 characters that twitter allows them to write, or the short form of a SMS or the short form of a Facebook status. This in turns influences the way they think and the way they use their imagination, and the way they tell themselves and others stories. And clearly, the way they speak and write too!
Kama, we got into a spirited discussion today about how the internet and lazy programmers are to blame for the current modes of slang, esp. via Twitter and text. The English language is always evolving and if you try to hang onto whatever version you were taught as a child, then you’ll find yourself pretty alienated by the time a generation passes you by.
Kama and DR:
Yep, slang has it’s “importance” and place in our society and is always evolving too, and today’ social media is to blame for some of it, but we don’t have to become lazy because it’s allowed in certain form of communications… When I text on my cell phone, I text the full words, I refuse to become lazy about it… I guess that’s why I don’t buy into twitter…
“You know what I mean?” is also annoying. These things strike me more as ticks that one should try to overcome as they age, and I think most do, at least on a professional level, otherwise it’s very hard to take someone whose 30% of his/her spoken words consist of “like” seriously.
My problem is with the word “actually”. I use that word far too often.
photog & EP: Actually? You both know what I mean. Like.
Um… so what exactly was the problem with this correspondence??