What is "Liketalk?"

"Liketalk" is the lingua franca of a new generation. As you listen on the street corner or in your place of work or in the halls of the high school, it is perfectly obvious that the very sound and essence of English has shifted in the last few years. A whole cluster or phrases are used because they make the likeaholic feel like they fit in; that they're youthful -- that they're not being conventional, boring older people.
But if you really listen, it becomes clear that the hipness factor has become completely hollow. Likeaholics don't hear the tedium and unimaginativeness of their habitual way of speaking. The sound of it can be compared to eating a meal:
Imagine you've ordered a four-course dinner at a fine restaurant...Ceasar salad with peppercorn, an elegant French steak dish, rice pilaf with almonds and scallions, a cranberry mousse for dessert. That's the English language, in all of its internationalism, its variety and flavor. Now take two handfuls of little lemon jelly beans and sprinkle them over every dish. THAT'S "liketalk". In every mouthful, lemon candy

How Americans are speaking today

What is "Liketalk"?

Do you want to sound like An American?
.....................
It’s easy: First, pick up your cell phone. Now start walking…anywhere at all – preferably where a group of people can easily hear you.

Next, start complaining about something -- anything.... Tell a nasty story about somebody and what they did.

Now, spice your speech with the phrases “like” and “I’m like”. Use "like" at least once every sentence – that will do.

Finally, make sure you casually throw in a few curse words every few sentences. And don’t neglect toilet talk.

You’re done! You now sound1 just like any one of 60 million Americans in the modern era!

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It sobers me to say this, but LIKETALK has unquestionably become the parlance of out times. What started decades ago as a word used informally to fill a moment of hesitation while the speaker decided what to say has jammed itself into so many places that it now characterizes, for most of the population under the age of 25, the basic sound of American speech. It is a new dialect.
But anyone who thinks liketalk is exclusively property of that age group, or primarily teenagers who are just “bonding” – cultivating their own cool lingo - really hasn’t been listening for a decade or so. The bug has burrowed its way into our speech for so long that the teenagers who were speaking liketalk in the late 80s are now in their THIRTIES.
Frank Zappa’s 1982 pop hit “Valley Girl” may have been the warning shot, and Clueless (1996) may have been the battle cry, but by 2007, the war is over and they’ve like, won.
Now even the CBS evening news anchor says it! That’s how far we’ve come.


WELCOME to the FIRST PAGE of this new blog, which will look at the new dialect we hear everywhere today...Let me know what you think, and thank you for logging on.....

Martin Blake

Language EMERGENCY!!

The English language is cracking at the seams....

Can't you hear it everywhere? On the street, in the high school hallways, outside your police precinct, in the catacombs of power....at your sister's wedding party....

It seems half the entire population can't finish a conversation without using the word "like" at least a dozen times. And for the other half, profanity rules the day.

Let me welcome you to the first page of my new blog, in which current language use will get regularly reviewed, commended, lambasted, even praised now and then.

For now, I'll just leave you with this thought. If you are truly afflicted with LIKETALK...there's hope. there is help. But as for society as large?? -....

.....there's no cure!!!

- Martin Blake