Whom are you going to believe, me or some strange dictionary?

— Prescriptivist and Proud Of It

quote:

Another peeve

My favorite use of "like" is the quotative "like", although I tend to use the quotative "go" more often myself. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...colloquial_quotative

In Classical Sanskrit, quotations are often indicated by iti.

So, it was Britney Spears who like, started it, huh? I dis-like that twit.

Thanks for the good info, Jim!

Hahaha-- love this article. Here are my favorite parts:
1.Emma Thompson in this interview sounds exactly like her character on “Years and Years.” Hmmm…
2. “They want to freeze it and they want to judge it.” Exactly as my dad used to say about what he considered snobby judgment re: land development [he was, guess what, a land developer]. We would call him a “descriptivist”—ideas change, culture changes, land use changes. (Not a fan of zoning)
3. “My, like, grandma died.” ROFL!!

My current pulpy read is a legal thriller published about 30 yrs ago. The attorney dad is at breakfast with his kids, and challenges his 14yo daughter to converse for 5 minutes without uttering either the word “like” or the word “mean” [as in, “I mean,..”] She retorts, “Well I guess I can’t tell my dad I like him, because he’s so mean.”

Augusts, growing up, I got to see all my cousins on my mother’s side, when her clan gathered in Brewster, MA. They were from South Jersey near Philly, Chicago, Long Island, plus two branches from Rochester NY. All the elders had an odd ‘family’ accent—a sort of clipped drawl—apparently from being raised by a dad from NC and a Mom from Halifax. My cousins had versions of it that had been diluted by their regional accents. The Chicago cousins—and only those cousins (and not their parents)—had that “uptalk, ending your sentence by going up, like it’s a question?” Was that a Chicago thing? Did it have something to do with their mother being French? They were kinda wealthy/ trendy: could they have been on the very front end of Valley Girl talk (in the 1950’s?). Hey:
Ann Margret was a classmate of the eldest-- was it a a Swedish thing?

We have talked about "so" here and here. I was doing a recorded interview the other day and realized that I started almost every question with "So..." I must stop that!

quote:

had that “uptalk, ending your sentence by going up, like it’s a question?” Was that a Chicago thing?

I don't think it is a Chicago thing. I think of it as a Canadian thing.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:

quote:

had that “uptalk, ending your sentence by going up, like it’s a question?” Was that a Chicago thing?

I don't think it is a Chicago thing. I think of it as a Canadian thing.

It's a feature of various accents including Australian.

I am sure I have said this here before, but I am very prone to uptalking. Some of our members are Canadians and when I am on calls with them, I notice that I begin uptalking. Very strange.

Just noticed this XKCD cartoon on quotative like.

quote:

Originally posted by zmježd:
Just noticed this XKCD cartoon on quotative like.

What are you like?

(Or is that just a British expression meaning something like "well isn't that just typical of you"?)

It appears that we are doomed to, like, similes.