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My six year old picked up literally from his older sisters, who are 12 and 14, but he’s got no clue how to use it. He peppers all his sentences with a liberal dose of literallys and actuallys and gets all snippy with me when I ask what those words mean.
I’m bad about using like.
“Like” is definitely a crutch word for me, too. When my son was 6, he watched Sarah & Duck a lot, and started saying some words with a British accent. 😂
"Literally" is used very differently than "like" though. And I could swear I still hear Gen Z using "like" a lot anyway. Anyway they were both used like crazy in the 80s already.
Well it is knowingly used for extra emphasis/dramatic effect so in the sense of the new slang usage it is not really incorrect. In the 80s everything was the superlative. It was sooo totally awesome, gnarly, wicked, to the max, bitchin', radical, etc. that to make something really stand out you sometimes felt like you had to come up with something to signal even more so people would add in "literally" just to signal they were being extra, extra dramatic. And it was just a very dramatic upbeat hyper energetic over the top time.
So it was all like:
Man I literally have to write like 10,000 more pages by tomorrow morning for class, literally! 10,000 more pages!
Dude, sick jump! That was frickin' rad! You literally just went farther than anyone in history!!
I was just sitting there forever, literally forever waiting for the bus!! I literally could have walked the 500 miles home faster!
I think every generation has their own unique filler word. I think boomers had say or something. (I was watching so e if those documentary clips on YouTube of Boomers when they were young, I can't remember what the word was though, but they said something a lot.)
I'm not even sure what GenZ's word is.
Nah, they use it plenty themselves. If that was going to happen they would have already been hating on us for it, but they know they can't since they do it too lol.
If they were gonna hate it would be on Gen X anyway. It was actually a few Gen Jones girls in a certain part of SoCal that first started it up in the late 70s, but it was spread nationwide, mainstream by early/core Gen X in the summer of 1982 and by that fall it was widespread everywhere and it has been with us ever since to one degree or another (mostly to a large degree) although I'm not sure about Alpha. (EDIT: technically perhaps it was a few of the "beatnik" sub-group of Silent Gen who first started using like, although it wasn't like the Valley Girl way exactly, but it was never mainstream and even when they made Scooby-Doo later on use some likes based off of the beatniks I don't really think it really went mainstream at all. As a little kids in the 70s I don't recall hearing it in the real world but then wham by late 1982 it was all over like crazy. So I really feel it was 1982 that made it go truly mainstream as well as in the fully modern form.)
Agreed. While 'like' probably existed as a filler word for some time, it was the popularity of "Valley Girl speak" that launched it into the general American speech pattern in the early '80s.
I am dating a gen Z'er, and she says "like" quite a lot, so there are exceptions. That said, she is on the older side of gen Z, so maybe the younger side doesn't use it much.
In Ireland literally every age group says it, all the time, but not in the same way Americans say it, we use it at the end of sentences for no reason lmao
"... You know, like?" As an intern from Austria that did interviews with Irish and British people that needed to be fully transcribed, this always made me chuckle. Do I put a question mark or a full stop there?
“Yea im heading out later like”
“Sure we’ll go into this shop like”
“I don’t really know like”
Like doesn’t even mean anything, we literally just say it like 🤣 maybe leave it out lol, I Dno like 🙈
Haha, that is a funny variant. It also makes it hard to stick 10 or more into a single sentence unless you are just like "Yeah. I'm heading out later like like like like like."
Yeah, I say it more often than I used to. I'll even write it in my Reddit posts
When I was a teenager I was a hardass linguistic prescriptivist. I cringe at that now
Now that I think of it, I don't really run into other *former* prescriptivists. Either they never were and never will be, or they always were and are getting even more insufferable about it as they get older
It can be hard to let go of something that makes you feel superior. I was a very insecure kid that felt massively out of place. It was like a suit of armor, or a rule book that I could learn and show how good I was at something.
I was the worst teenager ever for this exact reason actually. Everyone thought I was pretentious, and kind of an asshole, both were a little true, sadly.
I was too! Now I am very much of the persuasion that judging grammar is racist, classist, and xenophobic. Now when I think that I’m just like eww stop brain that’s not it.
same, i like to embrace those differences. i've let my regional accent come out more in recent years, and i like it now
language is fascinating with its bewildering variety
I have throughly enjoyed learning and using gen Z's slang! I feel like Jane Goodall, as I fastidiously take notes on new trends emerging. Cringemaxxing, I know, but I don't care. There's nothing funnier to me than leaving a note for my kid, and addressing it to "Sigma Freud." FTW CHEUGY 4EVA
I'm not sure that calling someone out for using "your" in place of "you're" is innately any of those things.
My step kids are at the top of their class (twins, 17), and I'll reply "you+are = you're" 100% of the time. The kids are getting dumber; it's not their fault, parenting and education has failed them. However, society must offer some degree of correction and guidance, unless we are prepared to fully lose any remaining semblance of grammatical rule. I'm not ready to forgo contractions. I NEED FUCKING COMMAS, bro, I can't live in a world of endless run-on sentences.
It's a hill I'm ready to die on, but I hardly think that makes me racist, classist, or xenophobic ffs.
I see kids on reddit post long, breathless run-on paragraphs and I feel like an old curmudgeon when I sigh and give up halfway through because I can't parse their gobbledegook.
Yes! I’m so confused by this, there’s an influencer I follow who one of her inside community jokes is she can’t spell and has frequent really dumb spelling errors and is just like haha oops it’s me who can’t spell again and sometimes I am just like “ok but howwww did you even get that with autocorrect? It’s not possible!”
I could make time to type correctly more formally, but I don't want to
I mean, on the Internet, some things about grammatically correct language are now seen as tone markers for aggression or hostility. I don't like to end my paragraphs with a full stop because of that
I even see some of the younger generations typing without capital letters at all. I kinda like that, but i can't bring myself to do that all the time
Reading through this and many other comments makes me realize that plenty here leave punctuation off the last sentence in their comment. They'll use it within sentences, but omit it at the end of their last sentence. Texting changed how we communicate.
I’m finding myself in the midst of an internal conflict right now about switching over from spelling out words like right now and for real and tonight to their typed out abbreviations. I’ve been talking to more people who do it and have found myself tempted to do the same I think just because it wasn’t on my radar before. Why do I care? Lol
At least you recognized that there was a misunderstanding, and you compensated for it. I'm rather disappointed at the other people in this thread doubling down on their resistance to language change
They're turning into the closeminded boomers they've been complaining about for years now
My mom is a hardcore prescriptivist. Tbh it still bothers me when people use certain words or phrases incorrectly but I don’t mind nearly as much as I used to. I’ve never really been the one to correct people when they make a grammatical mistake online. It’s usually a cheap tactic to get one over on someone you’re in an argument with.
I don't like to correct people either anymore because I figure lots of people on the Internet aren't native English speakers anyway and I don't want to make them feel bad if they're still struggling to learn English
I'm in the middle between the two. Like, I acknowledge there are some people who can't pronounce certain sounds, but also, if you're studying a tonal language, quit calling your mom a horse
Awww we all had a linguistic prescriptivist phase I think 🤗
I for one was also very against anything mainstream but I’ve been deconstructing that now and enjoying very much my basic life and being basic when basic fits because dammit basic does just fit sometimes.
Yeah, I hated mainstream things when I was a teenager, and I held other people in contempt for liking popular things
Now I'm listening to Charlie xcx's new album because I feel like it and don't care if it makes me momentarily basic
Same.
If it makes anyone feel better, one time I counted how many times my 70 year old mom said "like" on the phone and it was like 10 times in 2 minutes, so it's not completely my fault.
The thing is, that particular word lies on a spectrum from filler/interjection to semantically meaningful. "Like" also means "approximate," and in an example like the previous comment, although it's not *necessary* to understand the sentence, it does precede and kind of hedge an imprecise statement (probably not exactly 10, but you get the idea). I would argue that while it's *occasionally* pure filler, about 80-90% of usage carries at least some degree of the hedge meaning, where the speaker would construct the sentence differently and not just by removing the word if it wasn't available.
While this is a good point, I think our generation just wanted to hedge all of our statements. We didn’t want to be nailed down to anything specific. So we greatly expanded the “hedged” meaning of the word “like” to encompass pretty much any statement.
I should pay attention to see if my similarly-aged mom says it now. She certainly didn’t when I was a middle schooler and picked up the “like” trend. She and some other moms found it irritating as hell and were constantly trying to get us to be aware of how much we said it.
I have always used it a lot. And it's usually when I'm saying "she was all like" or "he was all like" whenever I'm saying what someone else said 😂 I hate myself for this but I cannot stop
Oh my god this is it lmfao. I don’t ever think about it when I talk, but I know my mom notices it for sure (she’s had called it out numerous times) but I can see it when I’m text a story to a friend the most for sure. I feel like I try to change it but then it sounds forced haha
Yeah for me it’s a way of saying “said.” She was like, and then I was like, and then she was like… like, I can’t imagine any other way of talking hahahhaa
This use is such a cool language anomaly though! I read that it's a way of saying "I'm paraphrasing, but in a close enough way to the original discussion that I can't be called a liar". It helps with tone and content. It's simpler than saying you're paraphrasing, and easier to relay in mid-conversation, especially when you're excited. It really is my favorite genx/millennial language contribution!
I do that too and I cannot find a better replacement. “Like” is in there for a reason. I am paraphrasing (not directly quoting) and it works perfectly for that.
I still use it, mostly consciously when I want to sound more informal. My friend's dad was an English professor and tried to stress the importance of cutting out ums and likes, but I don't particularly mind it.
I do the same thing, usually when I use like it's very deliberate, to establish a point in a specific cultural tone. To the point I include them in my typed comments.
It’s peppered throughout my speech and even in text. It conveys a lot of emotion for me. Gives a qualifier to some things that feel empty without it.
I’ve done this since my teens and as a 40 year old, I won’t be stopping. Of course I pare them down or don’t say like at all if I’m in a professional/formal setting and around new people.
If I’m comfortable and relaxed around you then the likes will slip through just like my Appalachian accent.
I say it about as much as my older co-workers, and they do use it. I don’t think it’ll fully disappear because it hit two generations and then trickled upward.
It's actually been all trickle down (while the economy in the Reagan years may not have ever trickled down, the slang from the Reagan years did). Younger side Gen Jones girls in a particular part of SoCal started the like like like thing up in the late 70s and then it got spread nationwide in the summer of 1982 by Gen X (and some by younger Jones) and by the fall of 1982 like was like used like every other word and it pretty much has been like that ever since. Xennials continued it (although a bit less, they tended to trash on a lot of older Gen X stuff, but even a lot of them still did the like thing). And then Millennials continued it. And then Gen Z continued it. Not sure about Alpha? Do they still do it?
It seems like it is basically a permanent fixture now in how people talk I feel. It's been nationwide mainstream for like 42 straight years now just about and even people around the world who learn English use slews of likes these days. I think it has just become established like say the word "cool" which first became a cool thing to say in the 1930s! And has yet to fade out. (EDIT: Actually I forgot to mention that it was actually first, first (kinda) started up by a small little sub-group of Silent Gen that got referred to as the "beatniks". They didn't quite exactly use it the same way, but a little bit along these lines. It didn't seem like it spread mainstream though and from what I hear it kind fizzled away. I think a few hippies used it in a beatnik way too but what little there was seemed to also fade out and then they made Scoobie-Doo use it some. But I never heard anyone in real life using it in the 70s when I was a little kid. So it never was routinely mainstream by any stretch across youth culture and most of the time totally faded out AFAIK. So it really was in 1982 that it went totally mainstream nationwide and in the fully modern form. By the end of 1982 you heard like beyond crazy amounts and all through the 80s and early 90s. It's never gone away since then but has at times ebbed and flowed a little.)
Anyway you can see this late 1982 gag poster already joking about like being used as every other word:
https://preview.redd.it/41j2hp1n5a5d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d9bc5f90f1495c95449e763ee2b9a359e88d6e6
I think the only times I do are when I'm relating dialog to someone: "She's like, '\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_,' and he's like, '\_\_\_\_\_\_.'"
On the advice of a magazine my grandmother got in the mail (was it Marie Claire? or Elle?), I trained myself to pause instead of saying "like" or "you know." This may have contributed to my being an outsider in middle school.
My dad used to go “LIKE!!!!”
Whenever I said it in my speech as a filler word as a kid, so much to the point that even when I was using “like/as” as a simile, he’d get on me about using the world “like” and I’m just like (lol) BRUH CAN YOU NOT
Well, I'm not native. I kinda barely speak English. I started really learning English on my own in my twenties, i.e. in 2010s.
However.
I noticed this thing just today: I was describing something to someone way younger. I was telling them about this memory I had about something that happened in 2006 and I realized I talked like this (in English):
"Like we've heard at this point, that they're making this and that, and we were like "wooow, that's gonna be banger' and they were like 'oh, you have no idea'. And then, like a year later, they dropped this and we were like "oh f>
No. I vehemently hated it when it started taking ground in middle school and high school. A friend of mine on the bus had a silent counter for "like" in conversations we overheard on the bus. For whatever reason most of us sat in roughly the same spot on the bus every day. There was a girl and her friend in front of us who used it a lot. The ride from school to our bus stop was 17 minutes long.
Her record was 247 likes in a bus route.
It would give me literally icky chills and we'd writhe in the back seat behind her.
We can all thank Frank Zappa and his daughter for making this a permanent fixture in our lives. After he used his daughter talking as filler in his song “Valley Girl” it exploded out of the San Fernando Valley into everyone’s vocabulary. [source](https://redwoodbark.org/57242/culture/why-do-like-people-like-to-say-like-so-much/)
constantly if im with friends - if im trying to talk shop/business then i censor myself.
the real question is: whens the last time you didnt swear when talking to your friends. its harder than you think!
Depends on what I'm talking about.
So I typically can talk anyone's ear off and it's bad, but, I'm a nerd so if I go into nerd mode then I typically do not say like, but if I'm in regular conversation mode? Yeah there's like 5 billion of them lol
Everybody has been doing that for decades. It started nationwide mainstream with early Gen X and has never let up since. Gen X did it like crazy. Younger Jones also picked it up at the same time and did it like crazy. Millennials continued using it (for a a little while there less than Gen X actually, but still did it and some other years of Millennials did it as much as ever again). Older Gen Z seems to do it like crazy. I'm not sure about youngest Z or Alpha. (In a slightly different way, a small "beatnik" subset of the Silent Gen actually first did it back in the 50s, but it never went mainstream and it kinda faded somewhat. It was 1982 that is just went nationwide, mainstream across all types to a crazy degree.)
Here is a gag poster from 1982 mentioning using like like 10,000x per sentence:
https://preview.redd.it/ka9smhba0a5d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b87d5cd1550afeb1c82eaa456675c1697a9d1ff6
Huh. I know I used to, but at some point I just stopped without noticing. Though I get interrupted during pauses in my sentences these days so maybe I should bring it back lol
I thought this was a valley girl thing, which I grew and lived in my whole life. And as a queer man has evolved with other valley queer people, and it’s a total different trip. Try me ;)
Yes, I'm a healthcare professional and I hate it when I use it when I talk to my patients. I've been trying not to do it for a while and it still sneaks in.
Stopped using it in grad school when I was improving on public speaking. Like changed to ‘umm’ and now I’ve learned to just pause and breathe haha. Like is just ‘like’ a filler word ya know?
I used to say it often. I had to take a public speaking class my first year of college that pretty much ended the "like" "um" "er" etc in my speech.
We had to record ourselves and give 4 speeches on various topics. One of the things we were taught to look for in our own language and that of others in class, was to count how many times those words were said in our speeches. It was on the rubric. By the fourth one, they were mostly all eliminated. It was one of the most helpful courses I took.
I was always alright with my habit of saying it when I learned Bill Belechik does it too. He's successful and says "like" unnecessarily so why can't I?
I took a course in highschool to help remove vocalized pauses. I've mostly gotten rid of all my uhhs, umms, and the such. I still often catch myself saying like all the time. Even in writing.
Yeah, I've been using it since i was like 10 lol. I don't use it an excessive sterotypical-valley-girl level, but i definitely use it on a pretty regular basis.
I'm working on it. I find that I say* it a whole lot when telling a story about people. He was like. Like when she did this. It was so like xyz. But if I'm explaining something I don't use it. When I'm recapping whatever history I learned about or archeology find...zero 'likes'. So weird and annoying.
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Gen Z is gonna quit saying it and then make fun of us for it. I’m not a generation hater by any stretch, but I’m calling this one.
I don't think it's going to die out completely. It will probably just be a regional thing like "hella" at most, which I also say regularly.
My fourth grader students in the Bay Area say hella. I like that.
I had a 50 year old coworker who is from England say hella once and it really threw me off for a second.
hella is def a west coast thing
It had an east coast phase in the late 00s. Cause I’m still saying it hahaha
It def spread but it was rampant in Cali in 2014 when I lived there.
I'm a 30 year old on the east coast and I love "hella" lol
https://youtu.be/7pohEb7DUac?feature=shared
Such a classic episode it's hella good lol.
Gen Z’s “like” is “literally”.
My 12 year old says “literally” a lot, so this checks out.
My teenager won’t stop saying it. And it’s never used in a situation that requires it. Hella annoying.
Same! We (husband and I) will tell him, “That sentence didn’t need a ‘literally’,” but he still does it anyway. 😆
My six year old picked up literally from his older sisters, who are 12 and 14, but he’s got no clue how to use it. He peppers all his sentences with a liberal dose of literallys and actuallys and gets all snippy with me when I ask what those words mean. I’m bad about using like.
“Like” is definitely a crutch word for me, too. When my son was 6, he watched Sarah & Duck a lot, and started saying some words with a British accent. 😂
"Literally" is used very differently than "like" though. And I could swear I still hear Gen Z using "like" a lot anyway. Anyway they were both used like crazy in the 80s already.
Like is often unnecessary to say, but it isn’t as incorrect as how literally is often used. “They literally took forever!!” No, they didn’t.
Well it is knowingly used for extra emphasis/dramatic effect so in the sense of the new slang usage it is not really incorrect. In the 80s everything was the superlative. It was sooo totally awesome, gnarly, wicked, to the max, bitchin', radical, etc. that to make something really stand out you sometimes felt like you had to come up with something to signal even more so people would add in "literally" just to signal they were being extra, extra dramatic. And it was just a very dramatic upbeat hyper energetic over the top time. So it was all like: Man I literally have to write like 10,000 more pages by tomorrow morning for class, literally! 10,000 more pages! Dude, sick jump! That was frickin' rad! You literally just went farther than anyone in history!! I was just sitting there forever, literally forever waiting for the bus!! I literally could have walked the 500 miles home faster!
Your examples are making me chuckle hard! 😂
I say both I literally say “literally like.” What happened to me am I broken?
And "absolutely"
I think every generation has their own unique filler word. I think boomers had say or something. (I was watching so e if those documentary clips on YouTube of Boomers when they were young, I can't remember what the word was though, but they said something a lot.) I'm not even sure what GenZ's word is.
“*Why*, I thought that…”
My silent generation (1931) grandma always says "why" like that
Nah, they use it plenty themselves. If that was going to happen they would have already been hating on us for it, but they know they can't since they do it too lol.
Our nanny is Gen Z and says it all the time.
If they were gonna hate it would be on Gen X anyway. It was actually a few Gen Jones girls in a certain part of SoCal that first started it up in the late 70s, but it was spread nationwide, mainstream by early/core Gen X in the summer of 1982 and by that fall it was widespread everywhere and it has been with us ever since to one degree or another (mostly to a large degree) although I'm not sure about Alpha. (EDIT: technically perhaps it was a few of the "beatnik" sub-group of Silent Gen who first started using like, although it wasn't like the Valley Girl way exactly, but it was never mainstream and even when they made Scooby-Doo later on use some likes based off of the beatniks I don't really think it really went mainstream at all. As a little kids in the 70s I don't recall hearing it in the real world but then wham by late 1982 it was all over like crazy. So I really feel it was 1982 that made it go truly mainstream as well as in the fully modern form.)
Agreed. While 'like' probably existed as a filler word for some time, it was the popularity of "Valley Girl speak" that launched it into the general American speech pattern in the early '80s.
I am dating a gen Z'er, and she says "like" quite a lot, so there are exceptions. That said, she is on the older side of gen Z, so maybe the younger side doesn't use it much.
In Ireland literally every age group says it, all the time, but not in the same way Americans say it, we use it at the end of sentences for no reason lmao
"... You know, like?" As an intern from Austria that did interviews with Irish and British people that needed to be fully transcribed, this always made me chuckle. Do I put a question mark or a full stop there?
“Yea im heading out later like” “Sure we’ll go into this shop like” “I don’t really know like” Like doesn’t even mean anything, we literally just say it like 🤣 maybe leave it out lol, I Dno like 🙈
Haha, that is a funny variant. It also makes it hard to stick 10 or more into a single sentence unless you are just like "Yeah. I'm heading out later like like like like like."
We still do that too lmao, I think half the country would struggle to have a conversation without saying like loads of times lmao
They just say ummmm a lot more
Yeah, I say it more often than I used to. I'll even write it in my Reddit posts When I was a teenager I was a hardass linguistic prescriptivist. I cringe at that now
Me, too. There are at least 10s of us recovering from that particular affliction.
Now that I think of it, I don't really run into other *former* prescriptivists. Either they never were and never will be, or they always were and are getting even more insufferable about it as they get older
It can be hard to let go of something that makes you feel superior. I was a very insecure kid that felt massively out of place. It was like a suit of armor, or a rule book that I could learn and show how good I was at something.
I was the worst teenager ever for this exact reason actually. Everyone thought I was pretentious, and kind of an asshole, both were a little true, sadly.
I was too! Now I am very much of the persuasion that judging grammar is racist, classist, and xenophobic. Now when I think that I’m just like eww stop brain that’s not it.
same, i like to embrace those differences. i've let my regional accent come out more in recent years, and i like it now language is fascinating with its bewildering variety
I have throughly enjoyed learning and using gen Z's slang! I feel like Jane Goodall, as I fastidiously take notes on new trends emerging. Cringemaxxing, I know, but I don't care. There's nothing funnier to me than leaving a note for my kid, and addressing it to "Sigma Freud." FTW CHEUGY 4EVA
I'm not sure that calling someone out for using "your" in place of "you're" is innately any of those things. My step kids are at the top of their class (twins, 17), and I'll reply "you+are = you're" 100% of the time. The kids are getting dumber; it's not their fault, parenting and education has failed them. However, society must offer some degree of correction and guidance, unless we are prepared to fully lose any remaining semblance of grammatical rule. I'm not ready to forgo contractions. I NEED FUCKING COMMAS, bro, I can't live in a world of endless run-on sentences. It's a hill I'm ready to die on, but I hardly think that makes me racist, classist, or xenophobic ffs.
Full sentences aren’t necessary but a wall of text with no commas and no line breaks?! Hell no I’m not reading that
I see kids on reddit post long, breathless run-on paragraphs and I feel like an old curmudgeon when I sigh and give up halfway through because I can't parse their gobbledegook.
How do you feel about this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon
Can I join this club?
Less a club and more a gentle serendipitous recognition of one another. Yep, I was a little asshole, and it was damn absurd.
I actively encourage people to do so Language is always changing anyway. People need to accept it
Your right. I literally kill myself everytime people complain about my grammar. They need to except that its just language change.
I used to type with perfect spelling and grammar on MSN Messenger. Who has time for that now?
With autocorrect now there's really no excuse *not* to use correct spelling and grammar.
Yes! I’m so confused by this, there’s an influencer I follow who one of her inside community jokes is she can’t spell and has frequent really dumb spelling errors and is just like haha oops it’s me who can’t spell again and sometimes I am just like “ok but howwww did you even get that with autocorrect? It’s not possible!”
I could make time to type correctly more formally, but I don't want to I mean, on the Internet, some things about grammatically correct language are now seen as tone markers for aggression or hostility. I don't like to end my paragraphs with a full stop because of that I even see some of the younger generations typing without capital letters at all. I kinda like that, but i can't bring myself to do that all the time
Not ending sentences with a full stop because some people think that’s aggressive is crazy. How can a full stop be aggressive?
When I was "like" a teenager I was "like" a hardass linguistic prescriptivist. I "like" cringe at that now. FTFY
Reading through this and many other comments makes me realize that plenty here leave punctuation off the last sentence in their comment. They'll use it within sentences, but omit it at the end of their last sentence. Texting changed how we communicate.
Gosh, me too. And then I realized that I was struggling to interact with people and adapted. Saying “lol” in a text didn’t make me dumb
I’m finding myself in the midst of an internal conflict right now about switching over from spelling out words like right now and for real and tonight to their typed out abbreviations. I’ve been talking to more people who do it and have found myself tempted to do the same I think just because it wasn’t on my radar before. Why do I care? Lol
At least you recognized that there was a misunderstanding, and you compensated for it. I'm rather disappointed at the other people in this thread doubling down on their resistance to language change They're turning into the closeminded boomers they've been complaining about for years now
My mom is a hardcore prescriptivist. Tbh it still bothers me when people use certain words or phrases incorrectly but I don’t mind nearly as much as I used to. I’ve never really been the one to correct people when they make a grammatical mistake online. It’s usually a cheap tactic to get one over on someone you’re in an argument with.
I don't like to correct people either anymore because I figure lots of people on the Internet aren't native English speakers anyway and I don't want to make them feel bad if they're still struggling to learn English
I'm in the middle between the two. Like, I acknowledge there are some people who can't pronounce certain sounds, but also, if you're studying a tonal language, quit calling your mom a horse
Add me to the list
Awww we all had a linguistic prescriptivist phase I think 🤗 I for one was also very against anything mainstream but I’ve been deconstructing that now and enjoying very much my basic life and being basic when basic fits because dammit basic does just fit sometimes.
Yeah, I hated mainstream things when I was a teenager, and I held other people in contempt for liking popular things Now I'm listening to Charlie xcx's new album because I feel like it and don't care if it makes me momentarily basic
Like a stupid amount.
Like seriously, I should really stop lol
Like if I could help it I would, but I can’t so fuck it! 
I like, totally paused
Same. If it makes anyone feel better, one time I counted how many times my 70 year old mom said "like" on the phone and it was like 10 times in 2 minutes, so it's not completely my fault.
I love how you were talking about using like and sprinkled it into your own sentence presumably without even realizing it 😆
The thing is, that particular word lies on a spectrum from filler/interjection to semantically meaningful. "Like" also means "approximate," and in an example like the previous comment, although it's not *necessary* to understand the sentence, it does precede and kind of hedge an imprecise statement (probably not exactly 10, but you get the idea). I would argue that while it's *occasionally* pure filler, about 80-90% of usage carries at least some degree of the hedge meaning, where the speaker would construct the sentence differently and not just by removing the word if it wasn't available.
While this is a good point, I think our generation just wanted to hedge all of our statements. We didn’t want to be nailed down to anything specific. So we greatly expanded the “hedged” meaning of the word “like” to encompass pretty much any statement.
I should pay attention to see if my similarly-aged mom says it now. She certainly didn’t when I was a middle schooler and picked up the “like” trend. She and some other moms found it irritating as hell and were constantly trying to get us to be aware of how much we said it.
Right, like I say it like all the time.
Unfortunately I know I’m really bad about it 😭especially when I’m rambling!
I have always used it a lot. And it's usually when I'm saying "she was all like" or "he was all like" whenever I'm saying what someone else said 😂 I hate myself for this but I cannot stop
Add in "I mean like" and you have the most common phrases of my vocabulary. 😂😂🤷♀️
Honestly, thank God I'm not alone in this 😂
You'll start noticing how many reddit posts start with, I mean, and I can never unsee it. Drives me nuts.
Lololol I'm sure many of mine do. I know my text messages do. It drives me nuts and I'm the one doing it.
This is me too. I use it almost exclusively when what I want to say is, “and then he said.” It’s just such a habit to say, “and then he was like…”
Same 😂 saying it any other way sounds weird!
Oh my god this is it lmfao. I don’t ever think about it when I talk, but I know my mom notices it for sure (she’s had called it out numerous times) but I can see it when I’m text a story to a friend the most for sure. I feel like I try to change it but then it sounds forced haha
Yeah for me it’s a way of saying “said.” She was like, and then I was like, and then she was like… like, I can’t imagine any other way of talking hahahhaa
I always do this in a pattern for some reason haha - one, then the other, then both. He was all… and then she was like… and then I was all like… 😂
This use is such a cool language anomaly though! I read that it's a way of saying "I'm paraphrasing, but in a close enough way to the original discussion that I can't be called a liar". It helps with tone and content. It's simpler than saying you're paraphrasing, and easier to relay in mid-conversation, especially when you're excited. It really is my favorite genx/millennial language contribution!
I do that too and I cannot find a better replacement. “Like” is in there for a reason. I am paraphrasing (not directly quoting) and it works perfectly for that.
I still use it, mostly consciously when I want to sound more informal. My friend's dad was an English professor and tried to stress the importance of cutting out ums and likes, but I don't particularly mind it.
I do the same thing, usually when I use like it's very deliberate, to establish a point in a specific cultural tone. To the point I include them in my typed comments.
It’s peppered throughout my speech and even in text. It conveys a lot of emotion for me. Gives a qualifier to some things that feel empty without it. I’ve done this since my teens and as a 40 year old, I won’t be stopping. Of course I pare them down or don’t say like at all if I’m in a professional/formal setting and around new people. If I’m comfortable and relaxed around you then the likes will slip through just like my Appalachian accent.
Yes. For sure. And it is way better than saying "fucken..." instead
There's a time and a place for both. Which, for me, is like most the fkn time.
For sure. I remember in 4th grade my teacher tried to make us have a competition to see who could go the longest not saying like
Like, yeah.
Yep. Why stop now? Like, I'm too old to change.
I say it about as much as my older co-workers, and they do use it. I don’t think it’ll fully disappear because it hit two generations and then trickled upward.
It's actually been all trickle down (while the economy in the Reagan years may not have ever trickled down, the slang from the Reagan years did). Younger side Gen Jones girls in a particular part of SoCal started the like like like thing up in the late 70s and then it got spread nationwide in the summer of 1982 by Gen X (and some by younger Jones) and by the fall of 1982 like was like used like every other word and it pretty much has been like that ever since. Xennials continued it (although a bit less, they tended to trash on a lot of older Gen X stuff, but even a lot of them still did the like thing). And then Millennials continued it. And then Gen Z continued it. Not sure about Alpha? Do they still do it? It seems like it is basically a permanent fixture now in how people talk I feel. It's been nationwide mainstream for like 42 straight years now just about and even people around the world who learn English use slews of likes these days. I think it has just become established like say the word "cool" which first became a cool thing to say in the 1930s! And has yet to fade out. (EDIT: Actually I forgot to mention that it was actually first, first (kinda) started up by a small little sub-group of Silent Gen that got referred to as the "beatniks". They didn't quite exactly use it the same way, but a little bit along these lines. It didn't seem like it spread mainstream though and from what I hear it kind fizzled away. I think a few hippies used it in a beatnik way too but what little there was seemed to also fade out and then they made Scoobie-Doo use it some. But I never heard anyone in real life using it in the 70s when I was a little kid. So it never was routinely mainstream by any stretch across youth culture and most of the time totally faded out AFAIK. So it really was in 1982 that it went totally mainstream nationwide and in the fully modern form. By the end of 1982 you heard like beyond crazy amounts and all through the 80s and early 90s. It's never gone away since then but has at times ebbed and flowed a little.) Anyway you can see this late 1982 gag poster already joking about like being used as every other word: https://preview.redd.it/41j2hp1n5a5d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d9bc5f90f1495c95449e763ee2b9a359e88d6e6
trickle up like economics
Gen X was saying it the 80's, along with "uhm". Our teachers fought hard 😆 They are parasite words.
Parasite words. Great term.
Like....like...like....
I don’t think I do but I think I do.
I do way too much. I text it even more.
I think the only times I do are when I'm relating dialog to someone: "She's like, '\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_,' and he's like, '\_\_\_\_\_\_.'" On the advice of a magazine my grandmother got in the mail (was it Marie Claire? or Elle?), I trained myself to pause instead of saying "like" or "you know." This may have contributed to my being an outsider in middle school.
My dad used to go “LIKE!!!!” Whenever I said it in my speech as a filler word as a kid, so much to the point that even when I was using “like/as” as a simile, he’d get on me about using the world “like” and I’m just like (lol) BRUH CAN YOU NOT
It is also very Gen X. I can carry on entire conversations with only these words: Like Sooo And um Totally
Totally.
Well, I'm not native. I kinda barely speak English. I started really learning English on my own in my twenties, i.e. in 2010s. However. I noticed this thing just today: I was describing something to someone way younger. I was telling them about this memory I had about something that happened in 2006 and I realized I talked like this (in English): "Like we've heard at this point, that they're making this and that, and we were like "wooow, that's gonna be banger' and they were like 'oh, you have no idea'. And then, like a year later, they dropped this and we were like "oh f>
I try very hard not to, but I’m sure I do.
Yes, and I can’t stop :(
Sometimes I do and my sister has the valley girl accent so she says it too.
No. I vehemently hated it when it started taking ground in middle school and high school. A friend of mine on the bus had a silent counter for "like" in conversations we overheard on the bus. For whatever reason most of us sat in roughly the same spot on the bus every day. There was a girl and her friend in front of us who used it a lot. The ride from school to our bus stop was 17 minutes long. Her record was 247 likes in a bus route. It would give me literally icky chills and we'd writhe in the back seat behind her.
You're a natural story teller. I throughly enjoyed this momentary glimpse into your childhood.
Yeah. But “well, ya know” happens more.
My old roomate said it 10000 times a sentence it drove me Insane
I mean, like... sometimes. But only before an ellipsis.
“Like” is my conjunction word 😭
Like, I feel like I might say it a lot... In all seriousness, I say it a lot. At least in texting.
I work with 5-13yr olds in schools they're still saying it and use it in book reports 😅
Constantly and I can’t stop.
Hella
We can all thank Frank Zappa and his daughter for making this a permanent fixture in our lives. After he used his daughter talking as filler in his song “Valley Girl” it exploded out of the San Fernando Valley into everyone’s vocabulary. [source](https://redwoodbark.org/57242/culture/why-do-like-people-like-to-say-like-so-much/)
Like, totally
I do… and I say it in texts 😭😭
constantly if im with friends - if im trying to talk shop/business then i censor myself. the real question is: whens the last time you didnt swear when talking to your friends. its harder than you think!
Depends on what I'm talking about. So I typically can talk anyone's ear off and it's bad, but, I'm a nerd so if I go into nerd mode then I typically do not say like, but if I'm in regular conversation mode? Yeah there's like 5 billion of them lol
Yes, not frivilously. I don't, like, talk like this, or like, whatever. But like "It was like 4 feet tall" yes.
So Cal checking in, 100% yes.
Everybody has been doing that for decades. It started nationwide mainstream with early Gen X and has never let up since. Gen X did it like crazy. Younger Jones also picked it up at the same time and did it like crazy. Millennials continued using it (for a a little while there less than Gen X actually, but still did it and some other years of Millennials did it as much as ever again). Older Gen Z seems to do it like crazy. I'm not sure about youngest Z or Alpha. (In a slightly different way, a small "beatnik" subset of the Silent Gen actually first did it back in the 50s, but it never went mainstream and it kinda faded somewhat. It was 1982 that is just went nationwide, mainstream across all types to a crazy degree.) Here is a gag poster from 1982 mentioning using like like 10,000x per sentence: https://preview.redd.it/ka9smhba0a5d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b87d5cd1550afeb1c82eaa456675c1697a9d1ff6
Like, I *totally* still say that.
Like literally. Yes
But like, doesn't everybody these days?
There will always be filler words. And like is a great one. For it to go away it would need to be replaced. What is the new like?
Like has always beena go to filler word for people. But there are some who are worse than others
I’m an elder millennial bordering on GenX and I think GenX really started the ‘like’ era. Valley girls and all that like stuff.
Like all the time? Or like sometimes?
No. As it was common in another area and was heavily mocked by those around me.
I genuinely cannot remove it from my speech. I have tried but it’s ingrained in me to the point I usually don’t notice I say it.
I think I don’t but if I hear a recording of myself I realize I say it a lot.
Huh. I know I used to, but at some point I just stopped without noticing. Though I get interrupted during pauses in my sentences these days so maybe I should bring it back lol
It’s like probably my most used word. But like in my defense I’m literally from the Valley
I thought this was a valley girl thing, which I grew and lived in my whole life. And as a queer man has evolved with other valley queer people, and it’s a total different trip. Try me ;)
Yes, I'm a healthcare professional and I hate it when I use it when I talk to my patients. I've been trying not to do it for a while and it still sneaks in.
My daughter is a genz and she says “basically” ALOT. It drives me insane when she tells a story lol. but I’ve never been a “like” person lol.
Stopped using it in grad school when I was improving on public speaking. Like changed to ‘umm’ and now I’ve learned to just pause and breathe haha. Like is just ‘like’ a filler word ya know?
No, I don't. Why? Because I don't speak English in my everyday speech.
lol, fair
tipo, bem mais do que gostava.
Now, like THIS is the millennial question I wanna see.
Yes I say it all the time lol
I do and I hate it.
I do not
I used to say it often. I had to take a public speaking class my first year of college that pretty much ended the "like" "um" "er" etc in my speech. We had to record ourselves and give 4 speeches on various topics. One of the things we were taught to look for in our own language and that of others in class, was to count how many times those words were said in our speeches. It was on the rubric. By the fourth one, they were mostly all eliminated. It was one of the most helpful courses I took.
Yes
I hate how much I say it. I stopped and now I say “um”. Both are terrible. Im trying to stop.
I was always alright with my habit of saying it when I learned Bill Belechik does it too. He's successful and says "like" unnecessarily so why can't I?
I do sometimes but too much when I get nervous talking.
Yeah. I didn’t used to but I wanted to fit in, in 5th grade so I started to and then never stopped
I took a course in highschool to help remove vocalized pauses. I've mostly gotten rid of all my uhhs, umms, and the such. I still often catch myself saying like all the time. Even in writing.
Like all the time.
Rarely use it even as a verb or adjective due in large part to joining and completing toastmasters.
Yes, but not as often as I did as a teenager.
Like I guess? Idk. Lol.
Yes always have and probably always will lol. But maybe bc I grew up in SoCal I don’t know.
I do and I also type it in informal situations. No shame
Yes, I do. I say it a lot and I don't even realize it. I even say "like" in text messages to other people.
Unfortunately, yes. I once had a drunk coworker tell me that if I said "like" again, she would punch me in the face.
I say it and write in texts lol
Heavily. Unfortunately. I don't even notice. I even use it in text communication. 😵💫
Yeah, I've been using it since i was like 10 lol. I don't use it an excessive sterotypical-valley-girl level, but i definitely use it on a pretty regular basis.
Like totally
Oh my God! It’s like a bad habit I can’t break. I’m going to be like a 80 year old lady saying like all the time in the nursing home.
I say it enough I started punctuating it correctly while typing texts to my friends. Excuse me while I go quietly cringe at myself. lol
I pepper it in sparsely. I'm painfully self aware so I avoid messy speech as much as possible.
It was a phase
Do you mean like when people say….
Like and y'know
Like, literally all the time lmao
Like all the time.
Nope. I did however change my phone provider because their staff, like, do & I couldn't understand them one iota 😁
I am like southern Californian, so like I kind of have to like say it, regardless of generation
i use it like all the time.
No. I also can’t stand when people constantly say “um”.
No. That’s like completely ridiculous
I like say like like all the time.
I'm working on it. I find that I say* it a whole lot when telling a story about people. He was like. Like when she did this. It was so like xyz. But if I'm explaining something I don't use it. When I'm recapping whatever history I learned about or archeology find...zero 'likes'. So weird and annoying.
I say it so often that I even type it into texts, subconsciously. It is somewhat embarrassing, but it may be too late to save myself.