'Whatever' is the most annoying word in the world...

...So says the Daily Telegraph, in what could be quite possibly the most obvious headline of all time.

Whilst it is true that language evolves much the same as the planet does (sorry creationists but that's just the way it is, you get to keep the fish and loaves story, and we'll keep the evolution one, m'kay?) there could be a very good argument made that the current iteration of the English language is actually devolving, rather than evolving.

In England there is the 'development' of "Estuaryese" which is a very bizarre and alarmingly guttural collection of grunts and "innits" that apparently demand that the speaker miss every single consonant present in any given sentence.

In the States there is "Ebonics", a method by which pasty-faced white-folk get to make fun of the way black people talk, without actually having to don their white robes or set fire to any crosses thereby confirming beyond any shadow of doubt, that they are indeed a bunch of cracker-ass racists.

In both instances the English language has been co-opted, adapted (for better or worse) and popped out the other end as something distinctly different. There are different intonations, different words, different phrases, but they are all English at their root.

Except one. Teenage-Speak.

Teenage-Speak is actually the most insidious of all of the new varieties of English. It is not only designed to enable those that speak it to think that no-one really understands what they're saying, but it is SPECIFICALLY designed to drive the adults that hear it completely out of their minds. Whilst the nasal tonality required in the delivery of this obnoxious verbal assault on the ears is nearly enough just by itself to make you want to gouge out your own eyes, it is the attendant body language that really is the icing on the cake. The lolling of the head from one side to the other, the hands on the hips, the rolling of the eyes, the impatient sighs as if they were speaking to Rain-man's dumber brother, are all part and parcel of this despicable perversion of the Mother Tongue.

It is therefore no real surprise that one of the most over-used words in the Teenage-Speak English language is named as the most annoying word in the world. It was a very close call though, second place runner-up was "like", which, as any teen's parent can verify, is frequently used as verbal punctuation in teenage sentences, or as a way to fill in the embarrassing gap that occurs when the teenage mouth has accidentally over-run the teenage brain, leaving the teenage mouth waiting there for the next inane phrase to come to mind.

So there you have it, 'whatever' is the most annoying word in the world.

Well, like, Duh dude!