Like, So and the Double Negative

I am not quite sure when people started opening their sentences with the words ‘like’ or ‘so.’ I rather suspect this unfortunate habit is of a recent vintage, and largely confined to the younger set, by which I probably mean those around the age of 40 or younger. Applying the irrefutable logic of numbers, you would doubtless have deduced that people around the age of 40 years, give or take, are prey to this deplorable practice of indiscriminately strewing ‘like’ and ‘so’ about like so much Christmas confetti. This infection has also caught on among many older men and women, who ought to know better. Perhaps this mode of conversation is considered fashionable, the new small talk. Possibly I am not seeing the wood for the trees. While the phenomenon can be seen in most parts of the English-speaking world, it is particularly evident in India. To illustrate, let me provide a few examples of conversations I have had with people of varying age groups during the past few years.

I ran into a college student at a book fair, a teenage girl who might have just qualified to get a driving license. We were browsing at a well-stocked book stall, and I watched her closely as she picked up Mother Mary Comes to Me, the runaway best-seller by the redoubtable Arundhati Roy. In a spirit of camaraderie and good fellowship towards another book lover I remarked, ‘You are a fan, then? Of Ms. Roy’s works, I mean. Have you also read her The God of Small Things?’ She looked at me a wee bit suspiciously, then noting my silver-grey, correction snow-white mop of hair, she appeared reassured that I was not flirting and proceeded to respond. ‘Like, I don’t know uncle.’ That uncle thing put the lid on it. She continued. ‘So, like I was saying, everybody was talking about this book like. Like I have not read her books before. So.’ A strong finish to a diabolical sentence!

Fair enough. She had made her point. I also asked her if the book title reminded her of a very popular song title. She thought hard, screwed up her eyes tightly and drew a blank. ‘Like I am not sure uncle. Like it’s something to do with Mary, yeah? Mary, Mary…’

‘Yeah, and nah, not quite contrary’ I butted in, getting into the spirit of things. ‘The Beatles, Let it Be.’ She looked at me vacantly. Clearly the swinging 60s meant nothing to her. I took courage and, sotto voce, sang the first few bars of the lyrics to her. When I find myself in times of trouble / Mother Mary comes to me / Speaking words of wisdom / Let it be. This time the girl did look alarmed, put the book back in its socket and was off in a flaming blur. She was blameless. Any young girl would have headed for the hills had a man of my age broken into song without so much as a by your leave. Some of the onlookers and even a couple of the sales staff at the stall came rushing to see if anything was amiss. Accusatory stares all round but I gutsed it out. ‘I was only singing Let it Be under my breath’ I said and handed them a copy of The Collected Works of J.D. Salinger (containing four of his most celebrated books). ‘Kindly raise a bill for this.’ That neatly took care of the stares.

More’s the pity. I could not get to the lovely Paul McCartney chorus, which basically involved repeating Let it Be half a dozen times and the other browsers could have joined in for the singalong. I apologise to the author if I deprived her of royalties for one more copy of the book that has probably already sold a million copies worldwide. Arundhati Roy is not exactly breaking into a sweat over where her next meal is coming from. Later that afternoon, I came across that girl again. Before she could swiftly turn tail, I expressed my regret and said something like, ‘So, I am so sorry. I used to sing quite well in my younger days. Like I was an A singer in school. Now my voice has gone to kingdom come. Please go back and buy the book. She writes well. An understatement. Your English will improve. You will not scatter so many likes and sos in conversation.’ She looked somewhat mollified, ‘Thank you, uncle. I will think about it.’ She was already getting better. No like or so in that last, albeit short, couple of sentences. You might have observed that I too dropped a so and a like when I addressed her, just to show there’s no ill feeling.

I now move on to the dreaded double negative in speech. That two negatives make a positive is not just a well-known adage, but one that the world of mathematics and science has battened down as an immutable principle. By inference this applies equally when we converse with one another. Forget about young students who may still be learning the ropes on the finer aspects of grammar. Television anchors and panellists in India, may their tribe decrease, think nothing of blissfully employing the double negative, thus indicating precisely the opposite of what they meant to convey. One prominent news anchor proclaimed loudly to a panellist, ‘I will not invite you to my programme till you don’t learn to be polite.’ The panellist in turn was not found wanting as he shot back with a, ‘Never mind, I will never come to your show till you don’t respect my leader.’ An Indian cricketing icon once said, ‘Till you don’t take catches, you cannot win matches.’ I think you get the drift, dear reader.

A quick aside. A linguistics professor once said that while in English, a double negative signalled a positive, in the Russian lingo, a double negative remains a negative. Under the circumstances, if Donald Trump, on requesting Vladimir Putin to stop raining bombs on Ukraine is met with a ‘nyet, nyet’ it simply means Putin will continue to bring grief to Zelenskyy, and might add in Russian, ‘Till they don’t give up Donbas and Odessa, I won’t stop dropping the bombs.’

There are exceptions. Exceptions that only prove the rule. Americans have patented the double negative to establish the positive. ‘I ain’t got no friends’ means the person has no friends and not the other way round, as it ought to mean, strictly speaking. Pop groups, irrespective of the country they hail from, have long since accepted the American way as the norm. At least, when they sing. Pink Floyd, the British supergroup, made millions by crooning, We don’t need no education. As did the Rolling Stones, equally British, with I can’t get no satisfaction. I suppose ‘we don’t need any education’ or ‘I can’t get any satisfaction’ would have sounded too unfashionable and plebian. Perhaps they had a syntactic issue to go with the lyrics and music. We can only surmise. Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady said it best, ‘There even are places where English completely disappears. Why, in America they haven’t used it for years.’

Lest I be viewed as a prig, I hasten to add that I am merely observing subtle shifts in the varying ways in which we speak English. It is not to be viewed as trenchant criticism. I say it as I see and hear it. In the event, I have only skimmed the surface. There are many layers to this subject worthy of a doctoral thesis. In the words of former American comedian Al Jolson, ‘You ain’t heard nothing yet,’ a ringing slogan the late U.S President Ronald Reagan used to good effect at the hustings, except he slightly changed the line to ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’

Postscript: Apropos nothing, recent events of great import on the international stage put me in mind of a calypso that Harry Belafonte regaled us with back in the day. You can join me in the chorus it if you know it. Ma-til-da, Ma-til-da, Ma-til-da she take me money and run Venezuela. Rumours that Venezuelans are singing this song on the streets of Caracas, replacing Matilda with some powerful American names, will bear verification.