Cindy,  I agree that words like “you know”, “like”, “to make a long story short” are overkill in conversations.  Here are some that I notice each time they are used –  “I’m good”, “really unique”, “very rare”, and “no problem”.  I especially took note of one of our summer guests, a German woman with a guttural accent, use “I’m good”.  My family plays a dice game called “Farkle” where we have fun ‘misusing’ words, especially verbs, e.g. “I should of went”.  It’s fun but I hope it doesn’t get so familiar to our ears that we use it in public.

English is my second language, French my first (nee Arsenault) and my third Spanish (I am now rusty as I do not get much chance to converse in that language). I had a good base in grammar and notice when the conditional is not always used when it should.  Another grammatical use that is wrong (and I may sometimes do it myself) is “between you and I”.  Most high-school-dropouts don’t care much about grammar as long as the  listener gets ‘the gist of what they are saying’.  Fair enough.  “If my buddy don’t understand what I gotta say, no problem, like, maybe he’s not awake yet”.

I’ve read a lot of books this summer.  Are you interested in the titles and short reviews?  Let me know.

Marie Lyon – Summerside artist with the Summerside Art Club.