I am listening (with extreme torture) to a podcast who has a guest on where EVERY DAMNED SENTENCE is linked together with the work *like*! 🤬
OMG! PLEASE STOP IT!
They're using it as a conjunction HOWEVER conjunctions should NOT be used to link ALL SENTENCES that come out of your mouth together.
If you speak a paragraph and you can remove the word "like" and that paragraph would be seen as a run-on sentence, then simply insert punctuation in your wording! It's a HINT, folks!
@jann I agree it can be overdone, but I'm coming around to the idea that such words provide a valuable use to our language.
On a related note, there was a really great episode of Alan Alda's podcast discussing this recently:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4AVE9ZfnSAOBlr1LKQxG71?si=2584f1d253b047fc
@LouisIngenthron It's not the word that I mind. It's the incorrect usage so many times in one person's communication to another.
@jann It's incorrect for the rules of grammar that you and I were taught in school, but is it really incorrect for the modern form of the language where we all understand its meaning?
One example that podcast I linked above used was "the more the merrier". The word "the" absolutely shouldn't work like that under normal grammar, but it forms a clause that we all understand as "when there are more, then it is merrier".
It seems the word "like" is undergoing a similar mutation.
I'm not explaining it that well, but the podcast really made me think about these sorts of things in a different light. You might find it interesting too.
@LouisIngenthron I'll listen to the podcast, but one of the things that irritates me is people tend to pronounce "liKe" with a VERY heavy K *all the time*. Oh, well. It's my problem...