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Grammar girl here, I'm Minyeon Fokerti,

and you can think of me as your friendly guide

to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today, we'll talk about a word people love to hate, like.

This is by Ben Yagoda, so when I say me or I, that's him.

Recently on NPR's Morning Edition,

an American student at Duke University's campus in China

described a class exercise about what the country would be like in 20 years.

Referring to some Chinese students in the course, she said,

They wore like Chinese military garb to the presentation,

and they had like the whole banner that said,

the 10th anniversary of Taiwan's return to China,

and that was like a big deal for the Taiwanese students

they were like extremely upset over it.

In fact, the student used the word like four times

in a 44-word statement, and she used it in particular,

recognizable ways that weren't traditional.

By traditional, I mean like as a verb, as in Jim Likes-Mary,

as a preposition, as in Sally looks like Betty,

and he reminds me of artists like Rembrandt and Vermeer,

...