December 17, 2010

Huh?

vomitsign
"Whatever" is the most irritating word of the year, tho a friend had the effrontery to write "whatev" at me the other day.

But note "for younger Americans, aged 18 to 29, "like" was the word that annoyed them most."

Huh?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

yes, tho i've noticed "like" as a linguistic filler has now permeated British English (you're welcome). so has "ohmygod" (written "omg"). even better, "likeohmygod."

Americans from my generation (X) are also fond of describing everything as truly "awesome," no matter how small, trivial.

gunna, gimmie, and fixin' are also fine contributions to the English language.

conversely, young Americans who spend time in the UK, however briefly, cannot rid their vocabs of "cheers" and "queue" and "loo." of course, this pretty much sums up a person's lifecycle in the UK, and says much re lasting impressions of living there.

Britishisms that annoy Us: "ya get me?"... "d'ya know what i mean, yeah?"... "whaaauh[t](?)" and, esp in Oxford and The City, "ooouuuuuhhh riiiiiiight, yeeeeaaah/z."

or how 'bout the monosyllabic "kafe" |kāf| for café. huh???

Mark said...

Wanker.

Anyway I say 'Kafe'.

Better than 'loo' is 'bog.'

Anonymous said...

Ok, 'like' is nowhere near as common in British as it is in American. Fact. Same applies to the 'omg-s' of this world. Sorry, fact again.

Who says 'fixin'' outside Texas?

Re 'ya get me?, you never hear those unless you hang out with the 'yoot' in the likes of Mile End, dear. And my bet is that they've moved on a while back too :)

Whatev indeed.