I see there's been a decline in viewership on your channel. I wanted to assure you how wonderful your videos remain, and how interesting they continue to be. The algorithm is hard to understand, but your passion and your knowledge are just as brilliant as they've always been. Thanks for sharing your passion with the world.

@Superbouncybubble

Жыл бұрын

I may be wrong but Simon Roper strikes me as one of those people who would make videos even if 10 people watched them.

@timolson4809

Жыл бұрын

I think it still has some prevalence among Male speakers in the Philadelphia area, I tend to say it quite a bit (I'm 22) but I don't know if that's me or if it's actually regional like that.

@MrZorx

Жыл бұрын

Looking through Simon’s videos, it seems like less of a decline in viewership and more like a decline in consistency of viewership. It used to be that nearly every video got about 30k views and now it seems like some get 10k and others get 50k.

@brushbros

Жыл бұрын

Dr. Roper should like, get to the point. Brevity is the soul of wit after all.

@Bubbaburp

Жыл бұрын

Always look on the bright side of life!

As a kid (south east, 1970s) we'd use "you know" in a very similar way with infuriating frequency. I distinctly remember when I was about 8 years of age discussing it with my neighbour (same age) and, despite being aware of our overuse of 'you know', we couldn't stop ourselves. "We keep you know saying you know, you know?"

@peters.778

Жыл бұрын

You know, I know, you know?

@InnuendoXP

Жыл бұрын

As an Aussie 90s kid who's been around the LA US cultural infiltration of our Millennials (why couldn't NY have been the urban cultural export?), as well as the older GenXers who'd also say "y'know" & some upper-crust posh people who made a point of saying neither of those things - you've basically gotta just pick your poison between "like" "you know" "err" "erm" "umm" or just a painfully awkward pause while they're formulating their next sentence - or people who deliberately speak slowly so they can think of their next phrase before they've finished saying their previous- but then you don't have a space to signal that you'd like to respond or interject so it's a different kind of irritating. It's time being spent saying nothing to signal the fact that a thread of communication is in the works either way.

@MagereHein

Жыл бұрын

That's like so gross!

@GrahamMilkdrop

Жыл бұрын

My least favourite was, "you know what I mean, like...? It bugged me that it seems to be missing something from the end and yet the whole thing is completely disposable, as far as I'm concerned, you know what I mean, like..? And... people said it SO much, you know what I mean, like..? Like, in or after every single sentence... YKWIML..?

@calvinjeanboi4855

Жыл бұрын

The stereotypical Canadian hockey player also does this. If you watch an average intermission interview with a hockey player they'll probably say "yano" about 20 times

...and then Simon was like, "give this video a like, like"

Growing up in the 90s, american teachers would also discourage the use of the word 'like' .

@fugithegreat

Жыл бұрын

Yes, in the 90s my high school English teacher made sure to drill it into our heads that using like as anything other than a simile or verb was very wrong, and also that the Beatles were sending subliminal diabolical messages through their music (she was about 30 years behind the times apparently)

@dayalasingh5853

Жыл бұрын

Growing up Canadian in the 2010s my teachers also did this

@ffvvaacc

Жыл бұрын

Same, 1970s and 80s, New York City.

@t_ylr

Жыл бұрын

Same in the 00s

@pricklypear7516

Жыл бұрын

We discouraged the use of "like" because it was interfering with students' ability to communicate and our ability to comprehend. Too often, "like" was accompanied by a mini-mimicry rather than clear articulation. Instead of saying, "He was astonished," we'd hear "He was like" [cue the bugeyes and gape-mouth]. It seems as though "like" can also be used as a linguistic shorthand for "Look at me!"

Down in Somerset, in the Seventies and Eighties, reported speech was marked by "And I turnt round to 'im 'an said..." "An' 'e turnt round to me 'an said..." Somerset people spinning ourselves into the ground as we argued!

@notvalidcharacters

Жыл бұрын

Presumably if you disagreed with the other person you'd turn widdershins?

@paulcoleman3081

Жыл бұрын

@@notvalidcharacters Ha! No... if it was a proper dispute you had to "come up to" as in: "do you know what 'e come up to me an said?" "Then I come up to 'im and said." We had to carry step ladders around at all times.

@mattmacdermott9832

Жыл бұрын

This is definitely a thing in the way me and my friends (mid-20s, from the south coast) talk. “I’m not gonna turn around and be like, you have to leave.” “For her to turn and around and say that is ridiculous.” etc etc.

I remember a student bringing this up in class back in the seventies in California. The kids today say, "I was like, "No!" and she was like, "You're crazy." I think as a younger kid we said, "I go, "No!" and she goes, "You're crazy!"

@gary_rumain_you_peons

Жыл бұрын

Valley Girl speak.

@sgrannie9938

11 ай бұрын

I still hear a lot of people using ‘goes/go’. I’m afraid I’m at the age where such pointless insertions, as well as slang adjectives, drive me slightly mad. Then again, I have always had an aversion to such manglings and misuses. ‘Like’, particularly when it’s every third word in a sentence or (heaven help us) paragraph, can literally (literally 😉) force me to leave the room.

@watermelonlalala

11 ай бұрын

@@sgrannie9938 You can find old recordings from early last century, nobody talked like that. Modern KZread recordings give the impression of major brain damage done to the US population since the fifties and sixties.

@ChameleonPete

2 ай бұрын

This is my recollection, growing up in the 80s. We’re in Midwest America, and if we wanted to mock teens on the west coast specifically (Valley girls), we would replace “said” or “goes” with “like.” But to an obscene degree. Teachers and parents would correct us if we tried to use it even sparingly. When we eventually adopted it here, we didn’t (and still don’t) use it as a constant replacement, especially if it’s a long recounting of events. We’ll disperse it with “said,” “says,” “goes,” etc to make the flow of speech sound nicer. “I was talking to the guy, and I said, “Meet me halfway.’ And he’s like ‘No, I can’t do it for that price.’ So then I go, ‘What about $5.50?’ He’s like, ‘No, man, you gotta meet me higher.’ And I’m like, in my head, like…isn’t that what I’m doing? Anyway, so he goes, like, ‘What about $7’ And I’m thinking no way, but I tell him that’s fine if he gives me a day. But then, out of nowhere, he says ‘Eight’s lowest I can do.’ Eight? I go, ‘I can’t do eight.’ But he says that’s all he can do.”

@MelanieAF

Ай бұрын

@@sgrannie9938I hate the misuse and overuse of “like”-it makes the speaker sound like a ding-a-ling. But the most annoying thing I’ve noticed lately is the misuse of “literally”. I was watching a YT video by a girl reacting to something which apparently flabbergasted her. She said “I’m literally speechless” as she continued on with her monologue. I’ve noticed a lot of younger people incorrectly using “literally” in this way. It’s very annoying. What will they say when something is actually literal?

My Grandmother used to tell this story from when she first emigrated from Jamaica to the United States in 1952 of a coworker saying she "felt like a hamburger." This usage was completely novel to her so she was befuddled as how someone could feel as though they are a hamburger. Even the unshortened form of "I feel like *having* a burger" was new to her. This usage of 'like' almost carries the vagueness of 'like' we have today because it is coupled to 'feel'.

My guess is that "like" is being used in its traditional sense as a simile. It softens the sentence from a statement of fact to a more open opinion. Maybe people are becoming more wary of sounding direct, or they wish to seem more approachable to a contradicting reply. I guess the difference between "Man, it's a hurricane outside", and "Man, its like a hurricane outside", is that the latter involves a little wiggle room for the listener to reply back with. It's fairly subtle, but I think it is lurking there in the background.

@FeedsNoSliesMusic

Жыл бұрын

I'm from northern England, and if I said, "gor, it's a hurricane outside, like," it'd be to inject a bit of irony or lightheartedness into my exaggeration of the weather.

@MathewAlden

Жыл бұрын

That's absolutely why I use it (Midwestern USA dialect)

@jointgib

Жыл бұрын

Gentlemen, it is indeed a hurricane outside.

@seamusogdonn-gaidhligarain2745

Жыл бұрын

While it’s hard to analyse one’s own speech, I think the part about trying to sound indirect and more approachable is why I use it (I’m from New England)

@_fudgepop01

Жыл бұрын

That’s effectively how I use it. For me it’s almost an indication of the quality of the particular thing that follows. It can be a sort of multi-level simile. It can *also* be used as a crutch word for me if I have an idea of the nature of what I want to say but need a split second to think of the proper analogy or way I wish to phrase things. It’s almost a verbal “macro” thats usage is determined by either what comes before, what follows, or both. Like… (haha, there it is) It’s similar to saying “this is not exactly was said or done but it gives the same tone (or close enough action) that I inferred by the subject’s action or reaction.” - so there’s an air of casual uncertainty applied to what was said

As a millennial ‘Valley Girl’ (yes, from the San Fernando Valley in LA), that’s definitely a part of our speech! However, we also use ‘all’ in a similar way when being a bit more dramatic-for example, ‘she went there and she was all “oh my god!”’

@kirstenshute2729

Жыл бұрын

I've heard/used it that way too here in Canada! E.g. "They were all, 'No, no, you can't do that.'" Maybe more when I was younger (also a millennial - born in '88). I don't know if I'd say it now, but I still use "like" that way in casual talk.

@ecliffordt5837

Жыл бұрын

"Valley Girl" lingo imo is from where the usage grew...totally.

@wolf1066

Жыл бұрын

I'm now having flashbacks to (caricatured?) depictions of Valley Girls in 1980s movies and TV shows... "Like that's *_so_* Last Week. Like TOTALLY!"

@julianjaffe8739

11 ай бұрын

Also "all like" is another variant!

@artugert

4 ай бұрын

Interesting. I’ve often heard and personally use “all like”, but don’t recall hearing and don’t use “all” without “like”. I grew up in the 80’s in the NW.

I’m from the American southwest, in a state bordering Mexico, and something I’ve noticed in the speech of my Hispanic peers is the use of the phrase “pero like”, which is an interesting use of the English word with the Spanish word “pero” meaning “but”. The other day I heard some people who looked to be in their twenties use the phrase multiple times as they were speaking with a mix of Spanish and English words, often changing languages in the same sentence. It was used before explaining one’s personal thoughts on the topic at hand. For example, after recounting (in mostly Spanish) a story about a woman who kept bothering the speaker, he finished with “Pero like, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” And then later “Pero like, I don’t have a choice.”

@danymann95

Жыл бұрын

In Central Mexico people use “como”,“así como”, pero… but the younger generations like me millennials and gen Z are starting to use calques similarly to the French (genre/comme/être en mode): estar así de…/ estar como/ pero….

@BobbyHill26

Жыл бұрын

@@danymann95 it’s all completely anecdotal, but I have heard lots of my native Spanish speaking friends say “como” exactly like an American says “like.” Almost all of them have been in contact with American culture from a really young age though and most speak English fluently, so I have been curious whether it is because of their personal experience with English or if it is common amongst all gen z/millennials. One time I was talking to a friend from Costa Rica and she used “como” the same way we would use “like” probably 4 times in just a few sentences and she was surprised that I thought it was odd. To her that was just the normal way it’s used, and I thought that was even more strange because at least us young Americans usually realize that we use “like” in an odd manner

@KatMistberg

Жыл бұрын

I noticed something very similar with an Indonesian friend of mine, also fluent in English, who would often say "tapi kayak" (lit. 'but like' in Indonesian) or sometimes "but kayak" or "tapi like". Pretty interesting.

@gudrun5531

Жыл бұрын

That's so cool. On twitter I've seen a lot of tagalog conversations that include some key English connecting words. It's really interesting.

@gustavovillegas5909

11 ай бұрын

As a Chicano myself, I use this phrase all the time when speaking

I've always found it interesting how "to go" can fill a similar role. "She asked if I was tired and I went 'yeah.'" I found that that would be used for more direct quotes than impressions tho.

@notvalidcharacters

Жыл бұрын

Or the phrase "to be there" -- I can remember roughly 50-60 years ago my peers were all like: "...And she's *there* 'what are you doing here', and I'm *there* 'I'm 'just on my way home'".

@crusatyr1452

Жыл бұрын

@@notvalidcharacters Oh wow, I'm 19 and from New England and have never heard it used in that way.

@LeeWright337W

Жыл бұрын

I remember, in the late 70s or early 80s, my dad asked me at the dinner table how my day had gone. So I started retelling a conversation I had had with a friend, and said, “And I go... And he goes...” in place of saying “I said... He said...” He got irritated and exclaimed, “Everybody goes nowadays but nobody ever gets anywhere!”

@kirstenshute2729

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, I've also heard that here (in Canada). And the U.K. must have it too, since Simon quoted a sentence with that expression at around 17:45.

@artugert

4 ай бұрын

@notvalidcharacters Where are you from? I’ve never heard such a usage before.

As much as we grumble about the young's patterns of speech, remember that the wide-reaching and wonderful family tree of Indo-European (same for all language groups) languages exist in their myriad forms because younger generations starting 'misusing' or 'mispronouncing' the words and syntax of the older generations > accents > dialects > new languages. I was actually thinking about this recently in the case of Grimm's Law and how it took hold. I wonder if parents were scolding their teenage kids back in the Baltic Forests for pronouncing P like F. "It's Pater not Fater. Show some respect!!!" *clip round the back of the head*. Slowly but surely it took hold and helped to produce the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family.

Simon, I really enjoy your discussions of spoken language. Your videos are something of a comfort-watch for me. I love the way the mundane and familiar get combed through, and your process for identifying all the relevant phenomena. Hope you're doing well. :)

@pahvi3

Жыл бұрын

I came to say more or less the same thing! Also his voice is so nice and relaxing

Frank and Moon Zappa were also responsible for popularizing this use of "like" in the track "Valley Girl" (1982). I was young then, but I was old enough to notice that everyone starting using it ironically, as the Zappas did, and that by the 1990s everyone was, like, saying it all the time.

@amazingcoolboy212

Жыл бұрын

I was like totally just about to say this

@sluggo206

Жыл бұрын

"Valley Girl" was the #1 song on Dr Demento's Funny Five for months. Then there were other things like a TV show in San Francisco where one guy says "totally" a lot. The rest of us were probably already saying "like" or "totally" occasionally -- I can't even remember now -- but these got us saying it more. Not as much as the people in the song, but probably more than we did before.

@mattosborne2935

Жыл бұрын

@@sluggo206 It was "hippie talk" until 1982. Shaggy speaks that way because he's a comic hippie character. The Zappas made usage more socially acceptable through irony, which is itself perhaps an irony.

@sluggo206

Жыл бұрын

@@mattosborne2935 I watched Scooby Doo as a child in the early 1970s but I don't remember how Shaggy talked. "Hippie talk" to me connotes 1960s words like 'groovy', not 'like' or 'for sure' or 'totally' or 'o my god'. Maybe hippies said them somewhere but not in San Jose or Seattle. I might has said 'like' or 'totally' a little bit before "Valley Girl", but the first time I heard those words en masse was with the song. We used to love the song because it was so funny, so unlike the little slang we used. "Like" on its own as an approximation or softener, as in "He's like 5 feet tall" or "She's, like, stupid" may have been growing independently in the Pacific Northwest English around me before the song appeared -- I don't remember -- but it was the song that introduced the idea of saying ''like' all the time and all those other words. (And only the ones above have gotten into my dialect -- 'tubular' and 'groady (to the max)' never did.

@mattosborne2935

Жыл бұрын

@@sluggo206 People said "tubular" and "grody to the max" too, per the song, but they did not stick

In the NE Scottish Doric dialect, 'like' has been used for as long as I can remember almost as a form of verbal punctuation. Far before any infiltration of 'Americanisms', Doric speakers and younger people around them have used 'like' in various ways or even as explained above as a conversational placeholder. I believe it to be common with Irish speakers also. Interestingly, something I have noticed in Doric Scots is the use of like at the end of a sentence to denote a question being asked. "Hiv yi nivver seen it, like?" (Haven't you ever seen it?) The interesting part is that without the 'like' at the end, the question seems much more aggressive, almost a statement rather than a question. "Hiv ye nivver seen it?" Sounds to the Doric listener more accusation, with an expectation that the speaker is casting judgment. The simple addition of the 'like' denotes an interest for reciprocation. I had wondered if this was a result of the mono-tonal quality of Doric, where in other dialects intonation is used to signify an asked question... Other than that, 'like' is peppered throughout nearly every Doric sentence and has been for a very long time. I'd bank on what is seen as an adoption of American language infiltrating British English being actually an older usage returning.

@jamawa

Жыл бұрын

Yes! Although I grew up in Falkirk and have spent my life in east Central Scotland, not NE Scotland, I'm sure I've used 'like' in probably all the ways described in the video all my life. It's such a normal part of everyday speech hereabouts, I don't believe it started in my lifetime and I was born in 1966. I'm a bit stunned to learn how many people dislike or disapprove of it. I never knew that till I read these comments. Certainly I was never pulled up for using it that I can remember.

Those old quotes of people using "like" were sooo trippy

Simon was born in 1998? So he's what, 24? That amazes me not because he looks older (he doesn't really) but because he seems to carry himself with the kind of maturity you don't expect from the average 24 year old

@cee_yarr3177

Жыл бұрын

I just turned 25 recently and he always seemed at least 3 years older than I was.

@fjlkagudpgo4884

Жыл бұрын

bro is glowing up I love him so much

@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038

Жыл бұрын

Love only exists for me the only lovable being, and I am the only being who glows / shines etc - such terms cannot be misused by hum’ns, and must be edited out, and hum’ns don’t know what love is, so the word like should be used instead! The words key and mon and number 3 also cannot be in someone’s name or yt name! And, the word girl (misused in the video) also only reflects me!

@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038

Жыл бұрын

Re op, honestly, Brits tend to look oIder (it’s just the way it is) and, having hair on face and very short hair on head also make one look even oIder - while having longer hair on head and no hair on face makes one look younger! Also, this reminds of a comment and a video where someone said that England is associated with oude people! But anyways, big terms such as amazes / amazing etc only reflect me, and cannot be misused by others!

@beckihayes220

Жыл бұрын

He's an old soul

And of course I became aware during this video of you saying “sort of” and now I’d love to know how “sort of” squirrelled its way into spoken English…

This is so fascinating and educational. Congratulations on your Ph.D. proposal, and warm wishes for happy progress.

Next do "right" as a discourse marker: "You go right up there, right? And then, right, you turn left, right? And then it's right in front of you, right?"

I remember hearing a quote during the 2000's that "Anyone who uses like more than 5 times in one sentence should be automatically ignored" I cant remember who said that but i buckled and chuckled at that one.

As a 28 year old in the north west, I've definitely used and heard other people use 'What were they like?' as a replacement for 'What did they say?' or I suppose more closely 'What was their reaction?'

@jonathanreilly

Жыл бұрын

Same here, similar age on the east coast US. Again, it's not to ask for a direct quote but when you're wondering what someone's reaction was. For example: "I told him the news." "What was he like?" "He didn't care" or "He was like 'Whatever'" or "He said he doesn't care" or maybe even a direct quote, although it's not necessary.

@yommish

9 ай бұрын

Yes, I have also heard “what were they like?” in contexts where someone is asking about someone’s reaction

I remember the character Maynard G. Krebs from the US sitcom Dobie Gillis, portrayed by Bob Denver. The character was a spoof of so-called “beatniks” of the 50’s (I think). Every other word was “like.”

In French, there are some expressions that are similarly recent that have similar uses. For the quotative "like", we have "être en mode [...]", which can be translated as "be in [...] mode", where [...] is the quote. (This is not very common here in Québec, however, I think) For some of the other uses, we might use "genre", like "Il était genre pas très content" (He was like not very happy) or "Il a mangé genre un énorme sandwich" (He ate like a huge sandwich). Similarly, one could use it in hesitating speech (But... like... = Mais... genre...). This is very common on both sides of the Atlantic. What is interesting is that, for some of these uses, here in Québec, we may use "comme" instead, which is the normal translation for the standard use of "like" (It was shining like the sun = Ça brillait comme le soleil). To take the previous example, one might say "Il était comme pas très content". I checked with some European friends, this is not something that seems to exist on their side of the ocean. And now that I think about it, "comme" might sometimes be used like the quotative "like" as well. Some might say this is due to English influence, but people have a bad habit of attributing a lot of things to English influence when it comes to Québécois French, even when it's not justified, so I'm not sure.

@thatcherdonovan7305

Жыл бұрын

We definitely use "être comme" dans ce sens-là. "Elle était comme blabla, pis j'tais comme what the fuck"

@JC-jv5xw

Жыл бұрын

Mode is also used to some extent in English, usually by technical people who are used to discussing modes in machines or software. "He was in denial mode". "Don't disturb me, I'm in lunch mode"

@Mercure250

Жыл бұрын

@@JC-jv5xw Yes, but in French, you can put a whole sentence in there, like the quotative "like". Although I don't think it's necessarily impossible in English, it's much rarer.

I was having a chat with someone (far younger than me) not long ago who kept using "he was like" instead of "he said". I replied at one point with "so what was he like?", meaning (in their speak) "what did he say?". I was met with a look of total confusion.

I think the word 'affect' (as a noun) captures what you mean by the whole shape of the conversation at 16:00. If 'said' can be used to report speech, 'like' can be used to report affect, including the gist of the speech, the posture, non-verbal reactions, etc. When we say 'he was like "oh fuck"' that is really describing the affect of someone's response

@bobgiddings0

Жыл бұрын

@Serendipity Vibe I read in today's paper that China was becoming discompopulated as well.

@diabl2master

Жыл бұрын

I agree, but then there's the usage (more frequent ino) where it is used to indicate the person said "words to this effect", which I feel doesn't exactly fall under this?

My grandfather, born in America in 1900, with Norwegian as his mother tongue, used to end some pronouncements with "like", same as that Cumbrian example. Lots of oldtimers did. Nowadays, the replacement marker has become "and that", sometimes just contracted to "Enna". We come from the upper Mississippi Valley region, where everybody seems to be of recent Norwegian immigrant heritage.

@youejtube7692

Жыл бұрын

Similar to the typical Londoner/Cockney: "innit" = "isn't it".

@bnic9471

Жыл бұрын

@@andeve3 Thanks for your perspective! Most of the people who grew up speaking Norwegian in the home (such as my dad and his folks) are now dead, but at least the accent sort of persists. Where I live, for example, we all pronounce "milk" as "melk". Other Americans poke fun at our accent, which was immortalized in exaggerated form in the movie "Fargo".

@jiros00

Жыл бұрын

Norwegians often use "ikke sant?" (which means 'isn't that true?') at the end of sentences so maybe he swapped it for "like".

15:32 it's so deeply ingrained we don't even realize we're using it

Just for fun, I entered the word "like" into Google's Ngram and the graph shows more than 100% increase in its appearance, with the curve starting to rise from the year 1980.

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley - a large suburb of Los Angeles - and our 1980's dialect, made famous in the song & movie "Valley Girl" - was pretty famous for its use of "like" in this manner. "Like, oh-my-god, he's sooooo grody (grotesque)!" I think this dialect grew out of 70's southern California surfer dialect if my memory serves at all.

I remember conversations narrated as, "And he went, 'Why?' and she went 'Because!'"

My memory is it came into British English in the 1990s, particularly ‘I was like whatever’ but my Geordie family used it at the end of sentences in the 1970s.

As a student in the US, our teachers also tried to correct us when we used "filler" words like "like" or "um". But that was mostly in the context of public speaking, where those kinds of words make you seem much less confident and knowledgeable.

I remembered seeing a reference to "like" in this sense of the word from Gore Vidal's 1967 novel Myra Breckinridge, so it has been around since at least the mid-1960s. To me, born in California, it sounds like a usage that may have originally emerged there (see the comment about its association with Valley Girls). Here is the passage (p. 54--note this is Myra talking, a satirical character): "he represents all that I detest in the post-Forties culture: a permissive slovenliness of mind and art. It is all like, like, like ... 'like help,' as the Californian said when he was drowning. They all use 'like' in a way that sets my teeth on edge. Not that I am strict as a grammarian. I realize that a certain looseness is necessary to create that impression of sponteneity and immediacy which is the peculiar task of post-Gutenberg prose, if there is to be such a thing. But I do object to 'like' because of its mindless vagueness. 'What time is it Rusty?' 'Like three o'clock, Miss Myra,' he said, after looking at his watch. He knew the exact time but preferred to be approximate. Well, I shall teach him how to tell time among other things."

@hilarychandler3621

Жыл бұрын

Wonderful quote! Vidal was a very incisive wit.

A great explanation that's calmed down my massive irritation with the ubiquitous 'like'. Thanks Simon. Good luck with the PhD proposal. If anyone should be doing a PhD it's you.

In Scotland oldies would use the construction " Whit like's .... "" eg a diner in a restaurant might ask " Whit like's the soup the day?" - meaning what kind of soup is on today , if it was merely listed as "soup of the day".

I heard 'like' in many of the contexts you refer to at London University where I was between 1976 and 1979 where An American student (from New York, even though she was originally from Argentina) used the word exactly as it soon was to become used in the UK. It struck me as bizarre at the time but it very soon took over everyday speech!

Simon, you are a linguist no matter what your degree is. All your videos are proof of that 😙 You are like Poetry: sometimes I don't understand you, but I LOVE listening to you 💙👑 Greetings from Argentina!

I've heard it used to split an infinitive: "I want to, like, improve my grades." And it's not just with " want to: "He said to, like, cheer up and, like, forget about it."

As an American living in Panama, I find myself and other people using "como" in a similar way that I doubt the Spanish teachers would find desireable. I suspect that English is influencing this, and in my own case I know it is a crossover from my own use of "like".

@LeeWright337W

Жыл бұрын

In Brazil, "tipo" is used in this way. For example, "Quero comer, tipo, um hambúrguer"

@clerigocarriedo

Жыл бұрын

Ιn French it is “genre”. Although not exactly.

So-and-so was like "blah-blah-blah" but his friend was all "yadda -yadda-yadda".

I was born in Kent in 1973 "like" certainly didn't exist in our local usage, however we would say things "like", "he went" when explaining something a person (male) said. Our English teacher would pull us up and say, "he didn't go anywhere!". Lots of people had a London sound, as do I but many local farmers/farming community sounded like they were from Devon/Dorset.

I'm currently listening to Thomas Merton on the poetry and letters of Rainer maria Rilke and I am, like, being driven slowly but surely MAD by his use of 'see' as a discourse marker LOL!

I'm an Australian Gen Xer. For me, it's not so much that younger ppl use 'like' in a wider range of contexts; it's the frequency with which many of them use it. They say it, like, ALLLLL the time and it really, like, grinds my gears 😂

@kitchensinkmuses4947

Жыл бұрын

this is true with any discourse marker or crutch though. Someone who says "so" or "err" all the time is just as infuriating to listen to

@gary_rumain_you_peons

Жыл бұрын

@@kitchensinkmuses4947 Like so?

One interesting usage I noticed that you may have mentioned is the usage of like in the context of "the ship was like to sink" in a similar way to how the word "wont" used to be used.

I am so damn old. Being born in 1982 used to make me young... time flies.

i had to write a paper on this when i was studying linguistics! its perceived overuse by some prescriptivists has always irritated me, it's just a very flexible word in that it can be used in a variety of forms as you pointed out in the video. and honestly, i feel my usage of the word has inadvertently risen since it's been pointed out to me. for example, i'm trying very hard to not use the word at all in this comment, and it's surprisingly hard for me.

@artugert

4 ай бұрын

It’s hard not to write it in a comment? The usage of like being discussed here, as far as I’ve seen, is mostly only spoken. I could see it possibly being used as a replacement for “said”, but certainly not as a filler word. I’m curious at what point in your comment would you have written “like”?

It’s probably in synch w the advent of cable tv. I grew up in toronto and i remember 1982 the word like really came into use and saying ‘amazing’ deadpan. Everything was ‘that’s amazing’. My mother said “it doesn’t sound so amazing when you sound bored saying amazing”

Congratulations and good luck on your proposal!

I've been looking forward to this ever since your offhand mention of it in one of your previous videos (might even have been the last one).

You have a very pleasant sounding voice. It's quite soothing.

I was a child during the 1970s (Midwestern US, Black neighborhood). We didn't use "I was like" frequently until the early 1980s, but knew from experiences with West Coast teen relatives and friends that they did use it, and laughed about it. We used "I went ______/" or "He was all _______". Older people and younger people around me used those.

English teachers from 60 years ago correcting Simon’s last sentence like: “All people have the right to be annoyed by the things by which they choose to be annoyed.”

“Like” has been an element of “hip” talk since at least the ‘50s.

I am an old guy, and when I saw "like" start to be used as described, it was imitative in spirit. Leastaways that's how I took it.

@ninamartin1084

Жыл бұрын

Am I missing something here but isn't all language imitative?

@kingbeauregard

Жыл бұрын

@@ninamartin1084 What I'm getting at is along these lines. If I say, "So I said 'go clean your room!' and he was like 'you're not my real dad!'", I am probably not just quoting the other person, my intention is to imitate him. That's what I think is at the heart of "like" used in the contexts under discussion.

@b43xoit

Жыл бұрын

@@ninamartin1084 As I said in response to another comment, I think that when we say someone "said" something, or "said that" something, we can paraphrase or quote verbatim, but we would probably not imitate their gestures and tone and manner of speaking. It would be just about he words or the sense. But when we say "she was like", we can launch into a dramatic portrayal.

I'm from the US and this is thought to come from Valley Girl language of the 1980s. You likely started hearing it more because it hits every generation in their mid-teens.

@b43xoit

Жыл бұрын

I am also from the US and I make the same association, with Valley-Girl culture in California. I believe that the underlying semantics of quotative "like" is to signal that you, the speaker, are about to launch into a dramatic performance. You are portraying, as though on the stage, the events that you want to re-create for the listener. In this vein, you have an opportunity, which I would not so much associate with use of "to say", to imitate the voice, manner, and gestures of the individual you are portraying. So the right-side argument of "to be like", in this usage, is the dramatic performance. Mr. Roper suggested that an opportunity afforded by "was like" but not by "said" is to paraphrase instead of quoting verbatim. However, "say" provides that possibility, too; one only need append "that". "She said that she presided over the organization." is a paraphrase. The exact quote might have been, "I'm the president." I think that using "was like" to convey only the same sense that could have been conveyed by "said" indicates a lack of sufficient courage to assert what one knows and could assert and to assert it in clear, straightforward, simple, unambiguous terms. This lack of courage corresponds to lack of self-confidence and lack of self-respect. A related usage is "to go" for quoting (at least, it came along around the same time and apparently from the same cultural origin). We are more likely to say "the cow went ''Moo!'" than "the cow said, 'Moo!'." We don't usually attribute "saying" to non-human animals, because "saying" connotes, or denotes, symbolic communication. So, when someone says about a person, "So then I go, 'what are you doing here during school hours?', and he goes, 'I was sent here to pick up some supplies.'", we are treating human beings with disrespect by speaking of them as though they were non-human animals and as though the noises they make lack for symbolic meaning. I guess this is appropriate when referring to assertions about supposed human gender.

@andrewmurray5542

Жыл бұрын

If you watch Scooby Doo, Shaggy often starts a sentence with 'Like'. That was late 60s onwards.

@cathjj840

Жыл бұрын

The seeds had already been sown by the '60s, at least in Northern California (SF/San Jose, i.e. what later became known as Silicon Valley). (Been there, didn't do too much of that yet myself)

I'm like glad you did a video on 'like'. Born in '46, raised in Kentucky, I first heard the all inclusive 'like' in the late 1960s as a marker for imprecise thinking. Not that our ideas are always precise, but 'like' for me signaled a speaker who enjoyed being stoned more often than not. My kids, born in the 80's and raised in Iowa, never use the imprecise 'like'. I'll use it occasionally to annoy, or to create doubt in the listener's mind about my past history. Like is particularly useful in a Bible study when you want to redirect conversation away from evangelical buzz words.

I remember as a kid hearing adults say "I says..." and thinking how odd that sounded. I says and s/he says being used similarly to "I was like" and goes (I go, s/he goes). I heard people using "...so I says" in the early 80's and those people were born around the 20's and 30's. The funny thing is when I was young my mother used to chastise me for using "he goes" and "I'm like"...and even "So I go, like..." and just using "like" excessively in general, and she took time recently to reprimand me over dinner about it again and I'm 45 now! I'm from the North Shore of greater Boston, Massachusetts. I love your videos, Simon! Thanks for all that you post.

Peckish, sir? Esuriant. Eh? 'Ee I were all 'ungry-like!

There’s also the usage as a suffix in gaming; “roguelike,” “doomlike,” etc. idk if it’s used like that elsewhere

Good luck on your PHD proposal Simon, there's no way they won't approve it!

In the US it’s generally assumed to have come from the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles during the late 70’s and early 80’s.

To my recollection, I'm almost certain it began as a Beatnik slang, if not from the contemporary American Jazz scene. Watch some clips of the character Maynard G. Krebs, from the Dobie Gillis Show of the late 1950s, early 1960s.

I think high school English teachers would get a kick out of using this video in their classes.

I come from Southern California, and have always associated "like"to mean "said" with what we call "Valley Girl Speech" (the slang of immature high school pupils, originating with the speech of high school girls in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley). And this usage goes back as far as the 1970's.

Now in my 7th decade as a speaker of the English language, I must admit to having inappropriately purist linguistic sensitivities. But such is age. We old-timers find it difficult to get used to new ways of behaving, thinking and of course speaking. For me personally, the use of 'like' in the way Simon describes is one of the most irksome of modern usages. . . . . but not the most irksome Back in the early nineties when I was working as a university lecturer, I noticed that one of my students had what was to me a rather annoying habit of raising the pitch of his voice at the end of many of his sentences. For example, he might have said to me "I thought I would look it up on Google?". I add the question mark because his intonation suggested that he was asking a question, even though he was clearly making a statement. Having noted increasing instances of similar speech behaviour from other students over the following months, it became apparent that this pseudo-question format was actually a request for confirmation or affirmation. The student in the above example wanted not only to tell me where he had looked up the issue in question, but was also checking that I was familiar with Google (a rather new source of information at that time). A nod in response from me would have assured him that I did know what Google was. As this manner of speaking became more common over the years, it occurred to me that it had become a modern alternative to utterances such as "Know wot I mean?", "Innit?", and Tony Blair's giveaway "Y'know?". And instances of this statement format were being used not only where some part of the statement might have been unclear to the other person but also where there could be no uncertainty regarding what was being spoken about. For example, a variant of the above example might have been "I thought I would look it up in a dictionary?". And of course, there would have been no uncertainty about what a dictionary was. It seemed also that the less confident the speaker, either in general terms or in relation to what he/she was speaking about, the more likely the use of this statement form. A statement expressed as a question, necessarily, is designed to elicit a response from the other person who is being invited to either agree or disagree. And the hoped-for affirmative response will assure the speaker that he/she is being both understood and (perhaps more importantly) being taken seriously. To conclude, Simon's video on the use of 'like' was so informative that I would love to see a similar video from him on the use of the pseudo-question format: a phenomenon with quite different roots but used by many of the same groups of speakers as the former.

@rjmun580

Жыл бұрын

I associate `upspeak` in England with the arrival of the Australian TV programme `Neighbours` in 1985.

@gavinparks5386

Жыл бұрын

Funnily enough , people in the east coast of Scotland from the area around Edinburgh and Falkirk have always had the habit of a rising intonation towards the end of a sentence , even when no question is intended or implied. I can remember older people doing this in the 1970s , so its been around since at least the late 19th century, and probably for a lot longer.

@TheStarBlack

Жыл бұрын

I thought the same thing - that it was basically an extreme contraction if "y'know". Funny though, I swear it's become much less common in the last 5-10 years.

@susanwestern6434

Жыл бұрын

@@gavinparks5386 It is also used in the West Country.

@LordJazzly

Жыл бұрын

@@rjmun580 High-rising-tone _is_ a well-accepted feature of pretty well most Australian English dialects, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was imported to other places via TV soaps. Interesting thing to note, though - in contrast to what Mr. Gosling is describing in his original comment, HRT in Australian English is used to mark that the speaker has not yet finished speaking - that is, it appears on every sentence in an utterance, on the final stressed syllable of each sentence, _except_ for the last sentence in that utterance. It's a bit closer to the rising-stress that you can use on list items in this way, rather than the rising stress placed on questions - it's not prompting a response, so much as signalling that the thing that's just been said is not intended to stand on its own, and there is more to follow. _Really_ interestingly, that follow-up doesn't even always need to be spoken _aloud_ - you can respond to someone with an 'I know', standing on its own, without HRT or with HRT; if you add HRT, it implies that there is more that you could say about the how and why and what that you know, but you're not going to, for brevity's sake. It's also, therefore, quite rude. I've seen it used this way on TV a bit for comedic effect, and in real life for substantially less comedic effect.

KZreadr David Hoffman has had a long career of being a documentary filmmaker in the US, and his style was mainly to let people speak (often everyday people). He’s shared a lot of his work on KZread and that might be a good source to find whenabouts quotative use of ‘like’ might have started.

In America, our teachers heavily discouraged the use of the word "like" in that usage as well. Back in the '80s and '90s anyway.

This was very interesting. A lot of us at high school in the mid eighties were using ‘like’ a lot. More so the girls I think. This was in Sheffield around 1986. We would use it before….a quote,, a thought from ourselves, a guessed thought in someone else, a feeling, even a facial expression such as a grimace. We would never use it at the end of a sentence….unless we were pulling a face. Even now in middle age we still use it. Especially when we all get together. We all admitted to suppressing it in formal situations so I suppose it is seen as a lower form of communication in some ways. Interestingly all of our offspring use it too. So it’s still very popular. We are generation X. I’ve noticed in our area the baby boomer generation don’t use it at all.

This usage of like reached the East coast of the US in the early-mid 1980s.

At 14:58 here in Southern California (which seems to be is regarded across the US as being where "like" is most common, we're often teased for it) one of the several functions of "like" is to introduce a direct quote (not a paraphrase). Note these two sentences: 1) "My boss called me in yesterday and he was all you're fired" 2) "My boss called me in yesterday and he was like you're fired". The first indicates that the boss didn't say the words "you're fired" but worded it in some other way, or that the speaker is aware of not remembering the exact words, while the second clearly indicates that the boss is remembered to have said the words "you're fired". These examples are from people's actual stories.

Love to be reminded of languages progress though time. I learned my native language Cymraeg late in life and have observed how it has changed since my daughter learned it 30 years ahead of me. Her Welsh is the correct as written word but mine is more social and relaxed. Needless to say she corrects me

@cadileigh9948

Жыл бұрын

@@Arcfort Seems to have changed frequently. My athrawes / female teacher ,we have genders yn Gymraeg, would point out how church hymns showed old patterns . There is also a dialect that is percieved as new Dysgwyr Odelion / Adult Learners Cymraeg / Welsh heard and accepted when people gather on the Maes at Eisteddfod

I, like, watched the video and then I was like "I should probably, like, like it too" like.

@b43xoit

Жыл бұрын

Totally.

it was common during my childhood. It still crops up in my speech occasionally, seemingly at random"

I've always had a negative view of discourse markers and am very self-conscious of using them, though I'm 30 years old.

@bnic9471

Жыл бұрын

I've felt that way, too. Then I noticed that I reflect them right back to teenaged interlocutors. Argh!

My first encounter with it was with the "Valley Girl" stereotype. I.e. "like, totally!" etc. I would love to see a video on American English's use of "um" vs. British English's "em" when collecting one's thoughts.

Interesting the way you described even recent memory of a conversation. I live in Spain and often stop for a chat with my neighbours (all Spanish) while out with my dogs, (like you do😉) but on recalling the conversation back home find I "hear" it in English despite the whole exchange having been in Spanish.

@ninamartin1084

Жыл бұрын

Isn't that just because you are reproducing your memory to an English-speaking audience as I am guessing you probably have English as a previously-learnt/dominant language? If you were recalling that memory to a Spanish-speaking audience I bet you would recall it in Spanish which would make it easy to articulate in an understandable way.

@leod-sigefast

Жыл бұрын

I lived in Spain for 6 years and I was still in the 'translate it in my head' stage of learning Spanish - especially speaking. However, I was beginning to get good enough to know certain Spanish words that I didn't need to 'think' about them (translate them in my head). I just 'knew' them. I guess that is how fluidity and mastery of a foreign languages takes hold: you don't have to think about it....just like in your native language.

@clerigocarriedo

Жыл бұрын

I think some young people may use “American like” in European Spanish, which is kind of odd. I think I have heard teenagers say “Y yo estaba como… qué?” Can anyone confirm?

@johnradclyffehall

Жыл бұрын

This happens to me when remembering films or television shows I've watched in another language! When I try to remember scenes, the actors are always speaking in English in my head

@micronomique

Жыл бұрын

​@@clerigocarriedoI had a partner who used 'como' in that way, but I used to think that it might be a mannerism acquired when he lived in the UK (2008-2012). I think that something that an English speaker of Spanish might uconsciously translate as 'like' is 'en plan' (very common and very annoying as well😅).

As a young Canadian speaker, if someone asked me "what was he like?" while I was recounting a dialogue and put the emphasis on he, I would probably interpret that as "how did he react"

Like a lot of things, new technology is a big driver of this. Radio, TV, the internet and social media have and have had an influence that can't be overstated.

In Colorado in the early 1970s when I was a college student, we used "like" in the way people use "um." The more you said "like," the cooler you were. It was a marker of cool. It was, like, the coolest thing.

Hi Simon, the use of like in most or all of the ways you describe coming from the 80's was present in at least the 60's. For instance, you mention Shaggy lampooning this. Well he lampoons the usage of like in that manner in their first episode in 1969. The first video I looked at with interviews of kids in NYC in the 1967 has evidence of it being used quite heavily. I'll link the video below. There are some examples in the first transcript of a Bob Dylan interview from 1965 that I pulled up as well. You'll see he (and various questioners) uses like in "modern" ways (but also use y'know). This was just from me going to the first sources I could think of (I just knew there'd be some good Dylan transcripts and know there are interviews w/ youths in the 60's online). I wouldn't be surprised if it came from the 50's to be honest from some or multiple of the many radical subcultures that gave us a lot of other lingo. 1967 Kids in NYC: kzread.info/dash/bejne/lqWBl7B7cbDOdrw.html The first 5 examples I found in the 65 Dylan interview (there are many more): Dylan: Uh-I don't really prefer those kinds of songs at all-"message" you mean like- what songs with a message? Q: Well, like "Eve of Destruction" and things like that. Dylan: I just know in my own mind that we all have a different idea of all the words we're using-uh-y'know so I don't really have too much-I really can't take it too seriously because everything-like if I say the word "house"-like we're both going to see a different house. If I just say the word-right? Dylan: That's another reason I don't really give press interviews or anything, because you know, I mean, even if you do something-there are a lot of people here, so they know what's going on-but like if you just do it with one guy or two guys, they just take it all out of context, you know, they just take it, split it up Q: Well, isn't this partly because you are often inaudible? Like, for most of this dialogue you have been inaudible Dylan: You see the songs are what I do-write the songs and sing them and perform them. That's what I do. The performing part of it could end, but like I'm going to be writing these songs and singing them and recording them and I see no end, right now Dylan interview transcript: dylanstubs.com/extras/1965.pdf Dylan interview video: kzread.info/dash/bejne/qYR9tZRuZ9fcn6Q.html&ab_channel=RouteTV

In Lancashire, there is also 'She/he was agait', meaning 'She/he said or recounted'. I remember my aunt using this a lot.

I used to not use "like" nearly as much as I tend to now, probably in part due to my friends using it-but I've only noticed it in my text-based conversations. It feels as if it softens a sentence for me: it lets me show either that I'm unsure of something ("Like... I guess that could be it" whereas removing the "like", despite the word "guess", still sounds more to my mind as if I'm committing to the idea); to accentuate my trailing off ("I could try that, but... like...") in a way that I guess signifies that I don't intend to finish that thought; or it sometimes adds humor, since its insertion midway through something I suppose indicates that I'm using a filler word while I try to think of a response to an absurd situation, as if my brain is sort of short circuiting from whatever it is we're discussing. So... like... I guess that's just something I picked up to fit in with them better, but I will proudly admit to that, since they're fantastic, intelligent people. I love how even little things that get on people's nerves eventually spread into common language, since it's clearly aiding someone in their communications with others, even unconsciously. I wonder what my friends would say if I asked them why they use "like" the way they do, and if I told them that I picked it up the better part of a decade ago because my brain liked how they spoke. They'd probably lovingly call me a nerd.

Handsome Simon.

Thank you for taking this one up! As someone who was already an avid armchair linguist in my teens when these new uses of "like" began to crop up in the NY metro area, late '70s-early '80s, I had my own firsthand observation & analysis of its evolution there & then. It seemed to very quickly take root, naturalized & invasive once introduced, as a kind of colloquial shorthand for "something like," in situations where one would rather take shelter in a paraphrase than try to accurately remember an exact quote and have to tolerate being corrected, or to avoid the time-wasting bickering about the exact wording - who cares??? - when what really matters is -the gist, the point.- "She was [saying something {understood}] like, 'You better get out right now!'" Or, "They were acting [in a way I find difficult to convey in words but something] like embarrassed." For a "long" while - as I recall it, time being certainly relative at different ages - it seemed to be a way you could speak among friends but definitely understood as lacking in the correctness a parent or teacher would expect. But this shorthand or abbreviation was so actually useful and highly effective in cutting through the unnecessary time-wasting verbiage of the adult world and moving on to the important content - that it overtook juvenile linguistics so quickly that adults had no time to become aware of it and learn to understand it as a way of speaking before it was already simply the obvious ubiquitous norm that had zipped under their radar. the last gasp of linguistic libertarianism before the legalistic and litigious '80s. my sense is that it migrated from the West Coast to the EC along with the commercial mass media apocalypse, maybe some Valley Girl and/or surf culture influence ... doesn't Shaggy strike you as a beach bum transplanted into B movies? 😄

Fascinating. I believe the scattered use of "like" throughout a sentence also performs the function of lending a "rhetorical" or "dramatic" tone. In my first language (Kannada), this function is performed by a word with the literal meaning "good" (adjective). When used in this way, the "good" occurs without any noun phrase that it could plausibly be a predicate for. I struggle to translate this usage even to languages closely related to mine, but I think the scattered "like" in English (incidentally originally a preposition but in this usage lacking plausible prepositional function) comes very close to being an accurate translation.

@revangerang

Жыл бұрын

Yes, this exactly!

There's a very similar development in German with the particle 'so'. Ich hab ihn gefragt was er essen will, und er so, "keine Ahnung". "I asked him what he wanted to eat, and he was like, 'dunno'."

I love your work.

3:50 'that's not the only thing he uses, by the sound of him' i peed but seriously, great video. your channel's a real gem, i'm so happy to have found it

My elderly family from Appalachia use "like" as a sentence adverb in just the same way!

Good luck with the PHD proposal. Love your work.

I've actually stopped, overly using "like" in this manner, because I don't LIKE, the way it makes me sounds. Specifically when saying, "about 10 minutes", for example, instead of like. IDK, maybe I'm just a nerd. Good video.

@b43xoit

Жыл бұрын

Congratulations on your progress in reforming your speech for assertiveness and clarity.

14:00, the citation coming in at 1982 is perhaps interesting to note that it came out the same year as "Valley Girl" was a hit, a song built around a changing dialect that was developing in California and brought a lot of consternation around the word "like".

@yommish

9 ай бұрын

From what I can tell, it was pretty well established in the 1970s. On the 9th episode of Saturday Night Live in January 1976, Laraine Newman does a “valley girl” character in the “Godfather Therapy” sketch. Shaggy of Scooby Doo was saying “like” in 1969.

As a teenager I remember there was an old man from Pennsylvania that I worked with, and he wouldn't really use "like", but instead he'd use "and he sez" or "and he goes" in the same indirect quoting way I'd use "and he was like" today

"It's like... you know... whatever."

@argonwheatbelly637

Жыл бұрын

You mean, "He goes she's like me and her should of went there with ur freind." I almost had a seizure writing that.

This reminds me of the way than an occasional "quoi" is thrown into French, quoi.

When I was in high school in New Zealand in the 1990's I noticed that the first people to start using 'she was like...' were teenage girls who were fans of the American sitcom Friends (the same girls would always discuss the show at school). I noticed over about 6 months the habit spread from those girls to al the girls and then to the boys.

I WAS LIKE (a poem) by Russell Kenny Guys, I’m literally begging you, Dude, what’s going on. When Generation Zee, like talks, My patience is like, gone. And they were like, And we were like, And I was like, no way! And he was like, And she was like, Can I get a skinny latte? Throwing shade, it’s like, insane Awesome, it's literally sick, TBH, I gotta go, To the bathroom, super quick, And they were like, And we were like, And I said lit, guys yay! And he was like, And she was like, And I said, bro , “No way!” Ain’t it though, d’ya get me? I was all, like woah, what’s up? Don’t stress about it, stay well cool What-Ever, as-if, Shut up! And they were like, And we were like, Face palm, I can't even look, And he was like, And she was like, And I said, what the fuck!

@ellie698

Жыл бұрын

Love it!

@diabl2master

Жыл бұрын

I can't even.

@star-cursed

Жыл бұрын

Simply amazing

@mwright_boomer

Жыл бұрын

Straight bussin’

@samgyeopsal569

Жыл бұрын

FR FR, straight up facts.

I could listen to you speak all day. This was fascinating; thank you.

My friend from South West Ireland used to say it all the time in the mid 90s. She would put it at the end of sentences.

@ThatGreatGuyJesus

Жыл бұрын

Was she from Cork by any chance? Like is exceptionally common on the end of a sentence in Cork & Limerick cities, so much so that it's a stereotype for Cork

@Blondie101010100

Жыл бұрын

@@ThatGreatGuyJesus from Tipperary/Offaly border, but went to college in Limerick. Was happening before Limerick though.