Language & Grammar discussion

http://www.wimp.com/speaktypography/

Like you know it was so like busy.

*violent twitch*

Better version because you don't have to look at Taylor Mali who somehow gives off a visual annoyance aura.

This isn't just about linguistic twitches. It's about the fear of appearing knowledgeable.

As the proverb says, "Nobody loves an eyewitness". So too, "Nobody loves an expert" especially when that expertise is useful, for example, on committees. Better to appear just "one of the boys".

He hits the nail on the head.

Ruth, not only was that fun it was enlightening too, because I had the notion that was the American tone of voice.After all most of us encounter Americans rarely.When I took students to the American Center to attend a creative writing course,the lady who was conducting it spoke like that. And recently I met a former student who has been in the USA for ten years who spoke in that tone.And then of course there's Hollywood.:-)

That particular intonation is mostly found in young people, Sonali, teens, twenties and thirties. I don't talk like that and neither do any of my friends, or even my children. I do have a couple of grandchildren who do. Drives me crazy.

Sonali wrote: "Ruth, not only was that fun it was enlightening too, because I had the notion that was the American tone of voice..."

Oh, mercy. It's *not* the American tone of voice - please don't think that. It's the tone of voice among the young and ignorant. The rest of us are horrified by it.

Like, really?

I wish I could find it funny.

If you can't find it, lose it so.

It's not so much the word "like" that drives me batso. It's the making of every sentence into a question by intonation?

Actually some of my students, who speak english fluently and love the American music scene,keep talking that way. And while doing 'communicative tasks' with them I go mad. I sent the poem to one of them(I hope you dont mind)and thank goodness, she saw the humour of it. Now she is busy mailing it to several of the others.:-)