Yes, I'd agree with that. Something else I find irritating is not so much the language used, but the manner of speaking. I call it 'Australian soap opera syndrome' and it is increasingly prevalent in the UK. This entails the speaker's pitch rising towards the end of a sentence, so that everything they say sounds like a question, even when it's a statement.
Besides, if I already know, and the person who is talking to me knows that I know, why is he bothering to tell me about it?
Basically, it is literally a challenge to say "you know" when the colloquial terminology is an easy "yaknow?"Like, I mean, it's only basically human to question if anyone really knows what, I mean, like anything I might be saying. Yaknow? I mean, like, I totally just lost it on this uh uh, iPad because it won't, yaknow, go off of the italics thing, yaknow? Really? I mean, like yaknow I might have to ask my, yaknow, uh wife, or something, how this keyboard works. ^%$#$% Really? This is literally too much ^%$# to ask when I am basically trying ta uh, yaknow, I mean, trying to^$# write in this ^%$#$% discussion forum yaknow? Really? now bullets! Like, yaknow.......I think I might as well get done so I can %# fix whatever uh, I mean, like yaknow, this low battery or yaknow, whatever it is. Maybe we should just, uh, yaknow, talk to each other instead. No? Why not? This does remind me of a joke, so I might REALLY try to fix my keyboard and post in the joke area. Literally, yaknow?
Something else that irks me is that most people in Britain seem unable to pronounce the letter 't'. We have developed a dialect known as 'estuary English', which entails people speaking more like those who come from London, wherever they happen to originate from. Even Scotland is not safe from this monster. A former colleague of mine worked in IT infrastructure and I remember him saying that he was "going to No'n'ham to sor' ou' a rou'er for a compu'er on Sa'rday", all of which meant that at the weekend, he was travelling to Nottingham to resolve a problem with a router in one of the IT offices. The floor was covered in dropped t's.
I think the excessive use of "you know" is caused by lack of fluency, sort of a replacement for saying "um" while one is thinking about what to say next. It never ceases to amaze me how many famous people say "you know" over and over again while being interviewed.
My major peeve is that there is no specific pronoun for "male and/or female. When I am writing articles, often I must put in whatever "he or she" wants.
You should think that if they took the time creating a word like "defenestrate" (to throw out of a window) they could make a more useful pronoun.
Ah, now there's a classic example of 'back formation'. The word defenestrate is a relatively new coinage, being formed from the noun defenestration. Defenestration: the act of throwing something, or someone, out of a window (as in "Talkin' 'bout my defenestration"). I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself.
No Problem Tom, interaction is what keeps the board alive! However....I do not believe I have ever or will ever use either one of those words! As a flash fiction writer, throwing somebody out the window has a bit more flair!
I'm reminded of the time (being something of an etymology freak) I looked up the meaning of 'rogation days'. I wondered if one could rogate, but one cannot. Rogation we can have, but we cannot rogate.
A good name. My favourite place name is the village of Pity Me in County Durham. There is also the strangely-named area of Newcastle called Two Ball Lonnen, which sounds more like it should be a film starring Paul Newman.
Hey all. A few years ago, I edited over 6000 descriptions of US neighborhoods (I think the job was for real estate blog or something like that). There were about 30 writers doing the actual articles and we were probably half-a-dozen editors looking over the work to make sure it was up to tack. From that job I developed a real dislike for "close proximity"-- and despite getting that redundant combination banned by the client, those writers kept coming back to sentences like "there's a movie theatre and a mall in close proximity". I've heard the combination in documentaries, in films, have read it in the New York Times and other "reputable" sites and still consider "close proximity" equal to "near nearby". Just grates on me. That and "amenities" when it was misused, which was often. There is no pronunciation of English that peeves me, 32 years as a pronunciation teacher led me to understand that no two people will ever pronounce the language the same and to draw conclusions from this diversity is an exercise in Henry Higginsism. peace, revel.