Comments on: We Should, Like, Stop Saying Like.

By: killlike

killlike — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:34:53 +0000

The incessant use of the preposition; like, as a conjunction in verbal dialogue, victimizes all listeners.
It is virally infecting the english language. The listener must wait, while the speaker musters a diluted expression or delayed verb. I suspect that the rampant infection is due to laziness, and or fear of inability to fluently structure thoughts into expressive sentences, while holding the attention of the listener(s). Once the sentence is contaminated with the offensive bridge, there is limited available means by which to close the statement.
Offenders that permeate verbalized thoughts with a preposition, forced as a conjunction, offer less descriptive information.
A percentage of my time is wasted listening to dialogue padded with useless inclusions. My time is valuable. Quit wasting it.

By: Keiht Adams

Keiht Adams — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:56:35 +0000

Oh my God...that's like....you know... awesome!!

By: ANNIE MARCOS AMIR

ANNIE MARCOS AMIR — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:29:04 +0000

I am so glad that Stumble! led me to this site. As a former English teacher it saddens me (but doesn't ruin my life) that we have come to such a pass with the English language. Gertrude Stein would not write in French even while living in France because she considered English such a wonderful language. Nobody likes a pedant, including me, who sometimes dislikes herself for not being more tolerant when I roll my eyes over something someone saying "That's not my for-tay" instead of "That's not my fort(e)." But we English teachers do get some marvelous laughs over this stuff, and laughing is certainly a good thing even when the laugh is one you, n'est-ce pas? and Verdad? I shall never forget a friend's telling me about the best malapropism she ever heard: a woman who'd just had a baby confided that there had been problems with the UNBIBLICAL cord. Gotta love 'er, right? Or my darling son, after graduating from high school and sleeping every day until two or so in the afternoon provoked me to say "You're wasting your life sleeping!" To which he replied, "How would you like me to waste it?" I found all your comments "inneresting" and want to thank you for them. This has brightened my day, which, if it were any brighter (I live in Mexico) would blind me. There's a writer whose name I can never spell (Shange Nuzaki, or something like that) who once read a piece on NPR about why Black people dress up for wakes and funerals. "R-E-S-P-E-C-T," as Aretha so wonderfully sings it. I have a dear friend who always refers to a colon (not asshole but punctuation mark) as "The two little dots, one on top of each other." She was an army brat and changed schools too often, which is how she explains away her ineptitude with language. But she could better put her energy, in my opinion, into an effort to remember simple little words "colon" and "semi-colon." Perhaps I've misspelled something in this rant; if so, forgive me and realize that none of us is (not ARE!) perfect, including this writer. As a poor self-conscious little girl growing up in affluent Miami Beach, I couldn't focus on anything in school and nothing made much sense to me but the logic, the nearly impeccable logic, of the English language and its literature. No one is ever going to quote you, except in jest, if you overuse "like" or conflate "then" and "than," and so on. As one translation of Flaubert's words reads, "Language is like a cracked kettle upon which we beat tunes to teach bears to dance, while we long to move the stars to pity." Wish I'd said that! Rant over. Signed "Happy Old Annie in Mexico, With, like, no more students to, you know, complain very, very, very sort of strongly about having to learn there, I mean their, you know, or is it they're? own language!"

By: Marcus

Marcus — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:01:11 +0000

I don't understand why yall have a problem with like. I think yall are crazy

By: eonsaway

eonsaway — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:42:34 +0000

Maybe it is time for the opposite usage of 'like','hate'. I don't know about you but I prefer 'like'. Interesting topic.

By: fauzan

fauzan — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:14:52 +0000

i like this site

By: Quito

Quito — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 09:09:19 +0000

Ok, the "sign" is clearly someone's little joke and the fact that it has misspellings is either part of the joke or kind of sad. Either way, I couldn't care less if people insert "like", "uhm", "belzebub" or any other useless word into their speech. What is incredibly annoying is when people like, speak like so, and that they are, uhm, so like full of these, like, words that you don't want to listen to them anymore. After twelve years of living in the US I find myself using "like" far too much, and it's usage increases exponenetially in tandem with my blood alcohol level. If only I could delete the damn word from my brain's dictionary, all would be peachy.

By: Ms. Kathleen

Ms. Kathleen — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:26:04 +0000

Acadamy, Awarness --- It does make one wonder who really made this poster? I think they should be fired for improper spelling. Ya know, like, canned.

By: Doctor X

Doctor X — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:32:27 +0000

This can only help my campaign to make "that's what she said" grounds for justifiable homicide. I approve.

By: How Bowers

How Bowers — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:22:28 +0000

An interesting point, TeacherCreature. "Like" spang forth in the '80s when rambling on was free. This generation will grow up with the limited character counts of SMS and Twitter and may be driven to economize language.

On the downside, everything will end up looking like Prince's liner notes.

By: TeacherCreature

TeacherCreature — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:08:07 +0000

Thank you to all for a most interesiting read, I like the reactions because some of you write like my students.

Remember learning in school that authors sometimes were paid by the word? Have you ever paid a high cell phone bill because of too many characters in an SMS?

Language is not just subjected to dialectic bias. So, when words are money, economize.

By: Can't wait 'til "I'm Like" is RIP

Can't wait 'til "I'm Like" is RIP — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:42:31 +0000

I'm sick of these "I'm like" and "and she was like" people. It's not laziness -- it's on purpose and it's illiterate. I'm not against informal conversational language, but the "I'm like" phenomenon is serious overkill. Some people out there can't speak one sentence without using "like" as a verb -- and oftentimes they use like TWICE as a verb in the same sentence.

By: Mike8163

Mike8163 — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:45:26 +0000

Also, there is a difference between the natural fillers that we use unconsciously to pause, "uh" , and knowingly sounding like a high school cheerleader to endear yourself to peers. The overuse of "like "whatever" "awesome" "I'm 'so' not wearing those shoes" are exactly that. It's funny how the very movies that showed how stupid this speech sounds, Valley Girls, Clueless, have somehow helped in making it catch on. Like ugh.

By: Mike8163

Mike8163 — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:02:34 +0000

Linguistic elitism? You've got to be kidding? We're not talking about dangling modifiers here, just overused and annoying speech patterns. I guess having any standard at all these days means you're an elitist. We have the self esteem movement to thank for that. No, standards, just whatever makes you feel good about yourself and your group. Ugh.

By: Fairyfloss

Fairyfloss — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:57:23 +0000

I had two americans visiting me over the weekend and I seriously got annoyed with them saying "like" about three times in every sentence... Its just plain lazy saying "like" instead of formulating a real sentence... Kill "like"

By: The Mickster

The Mickster — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:16:28 +0000

If there is one saying that I can't stand is hearing the phrase "for real". I guess in this world of pathetic cheaters and liars a simple short phrase to validate someone else's statement is for them to say "For real?".

By: lionel

lionel — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 08:22:02 +0000

Nearly half the people in the world have IQs below 100, by definition. How can you expect them to write without errors?

By: emily

emily — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 21:57:47 +0000

do you have stupied sounds?

By: Poor spellor

Poor spellor — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 07:55:07 +0000

While I find this an interesting discuction, I feel it is a case of lowered standards and/or expectations. People who use "like" or "ya know" sound stupid and if we don't correct them then we are promoting stupidity. personal email with spelling and grammatical errors need not be corrected and sent back with corrections,but maybe a note about the spell check feature in the future will make things easier for some people to tolerate the foibles of human kind. And kep up the discussion; I found some pearls in some of the postings,but the intenional use of "like" was tiresome after the second posting. And could I request people drop "literally" in conversation? Often It makes no sense as in "I literally crapped my pants when she said that." Sure you did...

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 20:05:17 +0000

In my opinion, the worst offender is an almost complete sentence. More specifically, I hate it when a writer writes a sentence that would be complete except for a missing "than", or "or", or a similar word. It often leads to me having to sit there trying to figure out the meaning of the sentence. If a writer would just overuse "like", or fail to capitalize the first letter of their sentences, I could move on. Robert Jordan is guilty of incomplete sentences in the last two books of his I've read, Wheel of Time #9 and #10. It really slows down the reading. His first several books were nearly perfect as far as spelling and grammar are concerned. Maybe he is becoming senile.

By: babyboomer

babyboomer — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 21:37:48 +0000

All of these comments are very interesting to read. I can appreciate the opposing points of view. When informal and personal communication is the main issue, don't worry over regional speech, common slang, or other words that you personally wouldn't choose to use, as long as you understand the speaker. In a formal setting or for something being said or written for posterity, try to make an attempt at standard usage. Let this poster be appreciated as a joke for the ones of us who like to pick out every mistake. I know repetitive phrases can become annoying, but try to value users for the color and variety they add to the world. Everyone may not have been afforded the same educational benefits and cultural surroundings. Not everyone had a mother like mine who went behind me correcting every mistake in grammar when I was young. Does this make them any less worthy? Does finding fault with them make us better people in any way? I don't think so.

By: Allen

Allen — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:59:46 +0000

Using "like" probably originated in California. Besides hearing it everyday, I noticed it in the first "Halloween". I think users are too stupid to substitute proper english.

By: Maddy

Maddy — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 06:12:32 +0000

This is BULL

By: likejondude..

likejondude.. — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:59:43 +0000

and ppl that have these really long messages, nobody is going to take the time to read yours if you go on and on and on..

By: likejondude..

likejondude.. — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:58:10 +0000

this whole thing is going nowhere really slowly..

By: PunkyPus

PunkyPus — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 05:55:39 +0000

i dig man. man.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 17:25:39 +0000

This is definitely satire. I canâ€™t find any reports of billboards, but it has been reported that a series of these fliers were/are being passed around LA.

http://www.whoisean.com/main/2006/06/acadamy-of-linguistic-awareness.h tml

By: Lizbennett

Lizbennett — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:53:06 +0000

How chauvinistic! This is just language policing. Using the word "like" in this manner may sound ridiculous to some (mostly highbrows), but it's a phase. You don't hear middle aged people saying "stuff" or "whatever".

By: Bobby

Bobby — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 16:26:41 +0000

And, after someone says 'thank you' say 'you're welcome'. Avoid saying 'no problem' or a variation thereof.

By: 3:20am WTF?

3:20am WTF? — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 07:20:26 +0000

I'm going to have to go with the grammar camp on this one. I was a "like" kid myself.. *shudders*.

That said it must be noted that spelling as a whole in an age where only about 5mm rests between g and h speeling errors are common.

However I do agree with the fact that if i cannot convey one clear linear thought without having to break a simple 5 word sentance into a paragraph of likes and ya knows then how am i to get others to understand what i'm saying.

/I blame videogames!
//how old is Bob Barker?
///SLASHIES///!