>>>>Thought of you the other day when I heard the following on the radio: "It's about one man's escape from Laos during Vietnam."
>>>
>>>Um... can't see how it relates to me, except the grammar thingy. Though, usage of "Vietnam" as a temporal adverb used to be quite common. We quite commonly say "during Sloba" - so I probably would not even notice anything wrong in that sentence.
>>
>>Yeah, it was the grammar. I figured you'd go to town on that one.
>>
>
>I am sometimes pedantic about language -- well, not as pedantic as SOME here <g> -- and read something on the train this morning that may have changed my mind. It was the "On Language" column in the NY Times Sunday Magazine and was written by a guest columnist (William Safire is on vacation). It was about the new usage of the word "like," which will be familiar to most of us who spend any amount of time around teenagers. "I was like, We don't want to get there that early, and she was like, But if we aren't they'll start without us, and I was like...." I razz Emily constantly about this one and have been trying to break her of it. The columnist's position, though, was that it really isn't that bad, just a typical permutation of the always-changing English language. She added that most of those who use "like" in this way -- who are not all teenagers, she asserts -- know the difference between proper written language and casual spoken language. She said "like" has not yet made
>significant inroads into written English.
>
>Do you have any, like, thoughts on this issue? <g>

Different use of "like" there. That's the hippy usage from the 60s :-)

Now you know me to be a language pedant but I actually like this concise use of English.

"And I was like ... {uh-ugh}" (or whatever - original sense - grunt or gesture. This saves so much speech, such as "I looked at him in an incredulous manner" (stunted). Now if in Britain we hold the Royal Family to be the guardians of "the Queen's English" then by the time Bill comes to the throne it'll be nowt like Liz's. There were a number of interviews with the "heir and a spare" recently, around the crap Princess Diana memorial concert. They use many of the "hip" expressions all the time. Princess Anne's daughter, Tara, the show-jumper uses "and I was like ..." all the time. I've heard people complaining about this expression, and I was like "get with it, daddyo! {g}", then caught them out using it themselves very soon after, quite naturally and un-self-consciously.

Not so long ago the expression "and he went, 'Hello'" was introduced, instead of "he said". How, exactly when, or why I don't know. But it entered the lingo without any protest. This is just an extention of that IMHO.

Like it or not, this has crept into every-day usage and is here to stay