The Most Popular Word in America- That is Making Us All Look Lazy!

We’ve all heard it.. and most of us have said it. We’re buzzing through a conversation and we want the person to engage with us. We’re lively and we’re animated, and we’re, we’ll, you know, pretty cool and articulate.

We don’t even realize, that in a span of about 3 minutes, we’ve used a word that we’re abusing over and over and over, and it’s pretty much unrecognizable, even though we are TOTALLY cool when we say it.

I realized it myself, that I was abusing this term or set of words, when my uncle said to me a few weeks ago, “Mary, you’re a professional communicator, aren’t you? Don’t you get paid to speak on stage and to coach people who are speaking to others?

“Why YES I do Uncle Leo! I work with people all over the country who want to be polished speakers”.

Then, he hit me with it. And, it actually stung. It was like taking down the prized fighter who told everyone he was going to win the match, but to lose and to be humbled in front of a home town crowd.

I was an offender, and it bothered him. It bothered him enough to TELL ME and to ENCOURAGE ME in no uncertain terms, to stop saying these words.

After Uncle Leo smacked me with the reality that I was misusing a term or set of words and overusing it to the level of being annoying to him, I started listening carefully to my clients and my friends. Sure enough, the word is there and repeated just about every other sentence. It’s crazy and it started annoying me too!

You know what I’m talking about?

Perhaps you don’t even know what I’m talking about, or maybe RECOGNIZE this term, because you know what? It’s no longer even two words, it’s become ONE WORD, and this offensive word is this:

YNOE, or maybe the spelling is, “YA-NOH” Even that isn’t it, because I truly believe it’s a new sound in the English language. It almost sounds like a cat meowing! (meow or Yeoh)

It means” YOU KNOW! And we use it all the time. We use it at the end or in the middles of nearly every few sentences, to make sure a person is with us, and listening, and of course, agreeing with us!

This NON-WORD is so pervasive, now that I believe we need to learn to spell it and put it in Wikipedia! We say it so fast that it’s no longer TWO words, and it’s now just ONE word, all strung together!

So I’ve been challenging my clients and my friends to STOP THE MADNESS! STOP saying
“YNOW” and start thinking about what we’re saying. I’ve offered the suggestion of slowing down and actually LISTENING to what we’re saying, instead of just talking without hearing how lazy we actually must seem, to those who are listening to us!

And I am challenging you too! If you hear it, TELL the person. If you’re SAYING it, STOP IT. With each of us noticing how we’re chopping up our language, perhaps we’ll pay a little more attention to how we sound. And perhaps we’ll all stop being lazy!

You know?

:)