Evolving English: what’s not to like?

David Shariatmadari has a point when he characterises resistance against neologisms such as “I was like…” as inconsistent and futile (Love Island is a lesson in how language, like, evolves, 22 June). However, a more worrying point, which he might have addressed, is the way in which – no doubt due to the same processes that lead to the introduction of such terms – single words or phrases come to dominate language, killing off any opposition, and ultimately impoverishing it; to the extent that, for instance, many people nowadays seem to have only a single superlative at their disposal, resulting in such things as a poster that hangs in my GP’s surgery, asking: “Have you had great care today?”
Jim Grozier
Brighton, East Sussex

• Anyone who feels upset by the overuse of “like” might turn to the American poet AE Stallings, who takes it for the title of her 2018 collection. She includes a virtuoso sestina which “rhymes” the word 39 times, and the following passage: “Those poets who dislike / Inversions, archaisms, who just like / Plain English as she’s spoke – why isn’t ‘like’ / Their (literally) every other word? I’d like / Us just to admit that’s what real speech is like.”
John Greening
Stonely, Cambridgeshire

• Pretending to watch Love Island for linguistic analysis is so Guardian.
John Vaughan
York

• I’ve just listened to an interesting segment on Radio 4’s You and Yours. The interviewee spoke of the lack of dental care services in care homes but irritated me by summing up the report as having a number of “asks” for the relevant commission to consider – for example, “Our first ask is for…”. What is wrong with “request”?
Julia Wildin
Dorchester, Dorset

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