using "like" makes you look fluent in english

I am not sure if American males/boys use "like" ad infinitum. It is a girly thing, I suppose.

"like" is one of my pet peeves usually said by cockney scallies, how have a short and limited vocab.


"and was like going down the shop like and my mate like, he said like we going down the gym later like, i was like, yeah ok like."

arrrghhhhh so annoying!!!!

I meant WHO have not HOW damn, see how the word like has already depleted my brain cells! *shakes head*

Achab, I agree with the other posters.

The use of "like" is just too colloquial, too immature. Typically, you hear unintelligent, immature teenagers use that word-- the sort of teenager who gets caught shoplifting.

My advice is, "don't do it."

There are certainly more *intelligent* fillers than "like".

"You know", "I mean", "well", "you see", "how shall I put it?", and "um" (this is a *sound filler*) are the first I can mention off the top of my head.

Anyway, even if the "like" filler may be quite sloppy, I think it's still a better strategy than becoming tongue-tied and taking a lenghty, unfilled pause. It's a way to keep the fluency juices flowing, and this is A-OK, at least from, well, a fluency-centered perspective.

Becoming tongue-tied and snowballing into an embarassed silence is the worst case scenario for a non-native speaker of English, a Broken Arrow-magnitude conversational disaster.

Just my two cents.

Achab

It is okay to use "like" here and there but do not overdo it. As a result, you may sound like an uneducated person with no vocab to show off. Emulate better/educated speakers of your target language.

This is a difficult one because you should probably use it if you want to speak good, conversational English but it should really come after you're definitely confident with speaking the language normally. The reason is that I don't believe you can understand when and where to use it naturally without listening to a LOT of English... it's sort of similar to the French "euh," and like that filler word, it's easy to make it sound bad. I would recommend against using it until you don't feel you need to ask the question.

Achab also brought something up that I didn't think about which is perfectly true. Some of the other fillers (I didn't really realise how many there are) are extremely common and understanding the context so you can use them effectively is a great way to improve yourself in a native-esque direction. "You know" is used when you expect the audience to know something; it often has a slightly sardonic or habitual tinge.

We use "Like" a lot, because it has a lot of usages.

Using "like" to express preference and want:
"I like(prefer) purple."
"I like(prefer) night time."
"I like(prefer) summer."
"I don't like(prefer) winter."
"I like(want) that one."
"I would like(want) vanilla."

Using "like" to explain or compare something. As a qualifier:

"The other day I saw him with Sally, like(similar to) yesterday."
"He said 'No, I'll be back at ten,' it was something like(similar to) that."

Using "Like" for softening blunt or unusual statements:
Greg: "I saw a space ship."
Fred: "What!?"
Greg: "It looked like a space ship."

Sarah: "I'm traumatized."
Jane: "No you're not."
Sarah: "I feel like I am."

"Like" can also be used as a softener or pause out of context. It doesn't have any meaning this way, it's usually used if something is exciting, and if it's overly used in a casual way it creates a stereotypical airhead/ditz/dumb kid impression.

"Like" as a pause:
"I -like- didn't know!"
"You can't -like- blame me for this!"
"Like- how was I suppose to know!" "Like how" can mean "In what way" I think that's slang though.
"It's -like- running over the mailbox!"

As far as slang is concerned, I'm from the US and I'm not sure if "like slang" would be the same elsewhere.

I think younger crowd uses the "like" more often older ones.
Using an word more often doen't make you fluent.
I hate when I talk to Porto Ricans and I hear "you know" 5 times in a 10 word sentence.

<<I hate when I talk to Porto Ricans and I hear "you know" 5 times in a 10 word sentence. >>

LOL
cute : )

I know intelligent, educated, middle-aged people who use (progressive) "like" with some frequency. It can be overused - I've heard it used to a cringe-worthy extent in some student-professor exchanges - but it has legitimate uses and I think it's become a standard feature of colloquial speech.

The reason some "middle-aged" people use it is because that valley girl style has been around for a long time. Some people may have said "like" in the eighties, but dropped it since then.

<<I hate when I talk to Porto Ricans and I hear "you know" 5 times in a 10 word sentence.>>

That's funny.

My sister had that annoying habit in the 70s. My father cured her of it by replying--each and every time she said it--"no, I DON'T know".

After a few hundred times of this, she quit it. :-)