I already said stuff like "neato" and "nifty" and "wig." Now, thanks to Buffy, I add unnecessary yet colorful suffixes to many of my words. Also, because I'm from the Midwest, I call soda "pop" and the vacuum the "sweeper."
I pick up conversational odds and ends from lots of books and TV shows. I haven't picked up any Spinelli-isms yet, but darn am I hoping to. I have a chance to meet the guy who plays him, but I've been holding off cuz of my health problems. I wanna make a good impression. I'm sure Spinelli-isms will come next, though.
Anyway, I sort of pepper my speeches with quotes. My best friend and I say, stuff about our "nerves" a lot in Mrs. Bennet-esque fashion. So we'll be complaining about something, then one of us will say, "Oh, my nerves! You don't know how I suffer!" We also like to say "Capital! Capital!" There are also certain phrases that I will work in whenever possible. "Insufferable man!" is one. I'll say "You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you" whenever possible, which isn't often. I also like "improving and perfecting my intimacy with you" and "is love a fancy or a feeling?" Umm... from GH, "our love is like fire!" is my standard remark when something looks cheesy. That or "I love my wife! Inside! Even more than she loves me!" You gotta do funny hand motions with that one, though. I'll also often pull a Shakespeare ("out out, damn spot!") or funny 18th century slang - because darn did they have good slang. I am especially fond of the words "saucy" and "saucebox." From Lonesome Dove, I like to use the phrase "Dandified Sonofab****." I also like to put the word "un" in front of things (like "UnBob"). Basically, I like to add "ified" to the end of just about everything.
I also picked up some interesting speech patterns in college. My best friends and I all sort of lift the last syllable of a sentence so that it sounds like a question. We also have a certain measured cadence that I'm not sure how to describe. It sounds kind of like baby talk, but with complete words instead of goo-goo-ga-ga. I guess it's just like most syllables are very pronounced, clearly annunciated, and spoken at a slightly higher than normal pitch. Last but not least, we tend to conflate words a lot in order to come up with new compound words. We said "ginormous" all the freakin' time before everyone else started using that one. There are certain college-related quotes that we use, too.
Add the Buffyisms to this mix, and boy do you have a strange way of speaking! Basically, I guess I sound like someone from Firefly. My speech patterns are kind of a mix of nineteenth century and contemporary English speech patterns. They're also constantly changing.
