So Like What Is THAT Like About?

So like I sat behind a like young woman, like, on the bus like yesterday and she like used the word like over and over again, like in her speech and stuff. Like how does that, like, even get like started? It like makes no like sense.

I wonder if other languages have the same kind of tic in their young speakers?

It's like likely.

It's a meme that has become almost ubiquitous, and I can remember people doing it when I was young.  Very long-lasting urban word-virus.

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Just for the record, Valley Girl Speak inherited 'like' from the previous generation: it was already, like, the conventional marker for hip/beat dialogue in the early 60s. Like look up Bob Denver's character Maynard G. Krebs in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. I have no idea how much farther back it goes. – StoneyB Aug 7 '12 at 13:45