[Magdalen] Like I Was Puzzled.

[Grace Cangialosi]

Guilty as charged, Jon! I don't know that I've ever said it any other way...

> On Dec 3, 2014, at 4:47 PM, Jon Egger <revegger at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> What really irks me is when people (our President included) use the horrid
> Midwestern pronunciation of "tuh" instead of 'to', as in "I went tuh the
> store".....arrrrgh!!!
> 
> +++
> Grace & peace,
> jon
> 
> 
>> On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 2:56 PM, Sally Davies <sally.davies at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Pervasive here, too. This habit started, I guess, with kids and teenagers
>> but has spread to older generations and from wherever it originated
>> (California? London?) to a wide variety of English speaking contexts.
>> 
>> The usual form here is "I was like...".
>> 
>> I think that people have taken to this expression because it is somewhat
>> distancing and seems not to commit one to a truth position. I was "like
>> that" - but I wasn't "that".  Maybe it's too much of a stretch to conclude
>> something about the culture in which such tentative self-positioning seems
>> to thrive...?
>> 
>> "After that, I replied...", or "and then, I did X"  sounds not only more
>> formal but more documentary! The "I was like" OTOH, avoids the bother of
>> finding the right verb. It sets up a sentence (if one could call it that)
>> which could go anywhere. I could be, like, saying something, or it's like I
>> could have done something, or maybe I could even be, like so wasted I can't
>> actually recall what I was like.
>> 
>> And sad/denialist as it may be, when you hang around with kids enough of
>> the time, you do, like, start borrowing their expressions in
>> self-defence...
>> 
>> Language evolves...or maybe unravels...
>> 
>> Sally D
>> 
>> On Wednesday, 3 December 2014, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
>> magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> I've had several people visiting my home recently whose every other
>>> sentence
>>> begins with "Like I was...." of some such.  These were not teenagers,
>> but
>>> adults in their 40's and 50's.
>>> 
>>> I've been aware of this rage for describing usually something in the
>> past
>>> with descriptions beginning with "Like", but I wasn't aware such  usage
>>> has crept so far into the general USA population.  I have no clue  about
>>> this
>>> phenomenon in other English speaking areas of the world.
>>> 
>>> This "like" business has become chronic and pervasive in the USA, and
>>> my question is about whether this is a fad, or marks  a chronic change
>>> in spoken English.  If it is long term, it demonstrates a  trivialization
>>> of
>>> the language IMHO.
>>> 
>>> Anyone have any thoughts about this "like" usage and predictions  about
>>> its continued usage?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> David S.
>>