anthropology essay#3

From observing my peers and I, I have definitely realized that the word “like” is often misused and hardly actually ever used correctly. There are two ways it is misused the most. ‘Like’ is a preposition and sometimes people will use it as a conjunction. For example, someone would say, “Rachel sings like I do,” making it sound as if you were intending a simile. The correct way would be to say, “Rachel sings as I do.”
The most common use of ‘like’ next to the verb form of it meaning enjoyment or to find pleasant, is when people use it to fill in a blank in a sentence. This making the word completely worthless in the sentence and often making the person saying sound ditzy and unsophisticated. For example, “She is like so cool.” It is used to put extra expression to a sentence in the wrong way. For example, “He like went like this when he kicked the ball.” This use of like in the beginning is making it seem as if the person is comparing something to another thing when in fact the person is simply describing what actually happened. Or when the person cannot think of what they are going to say they will use it as a filler. Others might use ‘um’ or ‘uh.’ I catch myself saying the word ‘like’ even when I was describing this paper to someone and had to laugh about it. I and most others that have been using the word ‘like’ for so long have to consciously think about not saying it and still we find ourselves filling in that gap with what seems like the unavoidable word.
I have always wondered if there is a word similar to ‘like’ that other languages have. There probably is, knowing that there is an incorrect grammar form of every language when it comes to slang.

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