"Like" abuse redivivus

[Wilson Gray]

They both sound fine to me. I try to avoid using the "like" version,
though, because of my degree of maturity. A senior citizen talking
like someone dekkids younger always seems a little out of place,
whereas my 95-y.o. mother will say, "X was all Y."

-Wilson

On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 9:37 PM, Benjamin Lukoff <blukoff at alvord.com> wrote:
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>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Benjamin Lukoff <blukoff at ALVORD.COM>
>  Subject:      Re: "Like" abuse redivivus
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>  On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>  > In hindsight, I believe it seemed understandable to me as an
>  > extention/contraction of "(What) he (said was something like), Q"--which is, after all, what
>  > it meant (at least then). There were other such quotatives going around then as
>  > well, at least one of which I reported in the early 1980s in AS: "BE all," as
>  > in "And he was all, 'Q'."
>
>  I once tried conducting an informal survey of my friends as to whether
>  they saw any difference between "And he was all, 'Q'" and "And he was,
>  like, 'Q'". I got absolutely nowhere. *Is* there a difference in meaning
>  here?
>
>
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
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 -Sam'l Clemens

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