'Like' or the Death of the English Language...

[Becks]

Anyone who uses the word "like" for every other word in a sentence shall be sentenced to the

[Sparky]

...What the hell? I can't wait to be called a MRS. instead of a MS. When did this happen, and why wasn't I informed when I was taught etiquette in every one of my primary school classes?

There's nothing wrong with being called Mrs. socially.

There's also nothing wrong with being called Mrs. Thompson socially and Ms. Smith professinally.

Using "Ms." (pronounced miz) means "I don't know whether or not you're married, and I don't care because it's none of my business." If someone is considering me for a job, or selling me a pizza, or sending me a letter about a job or about a pizza, why in the world do they need to know whether I'm married? If they're selling me car insurance, they don't need this information unless I'm asking for a family rate. If I'm running for office, *I'm* the one running, not my husband. Let's leave him out of the discussion.

Now if they're inviting me to their dinner party, they already know whether or not I'm married, because if they didn't know me they wouldn't be inviting me. And they're probably inviting my husband too.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I guess this is a matter of "like" or death then.

Anyhow, I must shamefully admit I liberally sprinkle my speech with "like", "umm", or "uhh" as filler words when the words don't come to me easily. However, I can at least shelve the "like's" when I have to, like when speaking in front of a group or having a job interview.

I don't really know how it happened. I guess it must have come from listening to my peers talk.

[Becks]

I guess this is a matter of "like" or death then.

Boo.

Good thing it's your birthday or I'd throw tomatoes at you.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

The word like, just like the word um, is a discourse particle, as well as a qualifier.

You may not like it, but it's been used in those exact ways for 60 years, ever since the Beat culture started using it. Linguists consider it an important part of speech, and it fulfills several specific functions in the structure of modern English. In fact linguists have discovered that ancient Hittite and Sanskrit laguages contained words that served the exact same purposes.

Discourse particles have no direct semantic meaning in the context of a sentence. Instead, they indicate the speaker's attitude, or they help the speaker structure their relationship to other people in a conversation.

People have been griping about changes in the language for centuries, but the fact is that languages change constantly. When Samuel Johnson wrote the introduction to his dictionary in 1755, he stated that he was writing it specifically to "refine the language to grammatical purity", and then goes on to lambast all the people who speak 'wrong', and singles out porters, herdsmen, and females as being especially guilty.

[Kheldarson]

Why do we always get pegged as a guilty party in the destruction of civilization? I mean, we were only used as a civilizing agent in Europe, colonial America, and the American West...*comic sigh*

[Setsunaela]

I am occasionally guilty of such speech-statics as like, and um, and uh. I'm horrible at public speaking, and there's lots of "uh" in there, but I don't use "like" in every other word, and I don't even really use it in it's actual place. I prefer to say I prefer, rather than I like, mostly because of so many people in my school saying "like.. um... where's the like.. bathroom?"

[DevilBoy]

What irks me even more is the horrible grammar and spelling used by most people these days.

I can understand a typo here and there, that's fine.
I especially cannot stand the following:

"your" used in place of "you're" (even worse is the vice-versa of this)

"their" used in place of "they're"

"here" used in place of "hear"

...essentially any time where a person misuses a homonym.
Spell-check is great, but it won't tell you that "you're" an idiot for using "there" when you should have used "their" if you spelled it correctly.
You still have to go back and actually proofread what you wrote.

[tropicsgoddess]

I think after hearing the work like in every sentence I'd want to either the person for doing that or . GAH!!!

[Bella_Vixen]

Spell-check is great, but it won't tell you that "you're" an idiot for using "there" when you should have used "their" if you spelled it correctly.
You still have to go back and actually proofread what you wrote.

AOhell's spellcheck tells me if I used the wrong word, even if I DID spell it correctly.

[Crow The Robot]

When i worked at Wal mart people would write checks payable to Wal-Mart's, drove me crazy, but the checks always went through.

[Pezzle]

There's nothing wrong with being called Mrs. socially.

There's also nothing wrong with being called Mrs. Thompson socially and Ms. Smith professinally.

Ahh! I understand better now. Though I wouldn't mind being called "Mrs. Smith" professionally amongst my co-workers, but I guess that would count as social?

[Broomjockey]

Okay, I'm going to need to ask people to confine this to a very narrow field, which is "customers using language incorrectly." Any discussion of proper grammar, changes in language, etc. are not brain burp material, nor particularly fodder for CS. Fratching does have a section entitled "Things I hate," which would be eminently suitable for that discussion.

[marty]

My brother used to do the "like" thing, until I wouldn't stop pointing it out. Little sisters acting annoying can be a good thing.

I can't stand it when people use apostrophes wrong. Possession or contractions, people! I see that and the there/their/they're issue more than anything while editing peer essays.

[otakuneko]

I don't remember getting much of the like, Valley Girl, like thing when I was working tech support.

On the flip side though, I'm sure a lot of the people I talk to would actually prefer if I used the "um/uh" thing a bit more often, to indicate a pause for thought. I tend to go quiet at times, which leads people to think I'm not paying attention.