Teen Times: Question: What do my granny, Pat Kenny, 2FM DJ Ruth Scott and every second Irish teenager have in common? Answer: They all use, to varying degrees, one of the most irritating and baffling Americanisms ever, in conversation. It's called upspeak and it's, like, driving me mad?

Upspeak is a communication device employed by people who've watched one too many episodes of Sex and the City - though I can't see my granny being a fan of said show - or Friends. They make questions out of sentences that really shouldn't have been questions in the first place. Or more simply they speak "up" at the end of a sentence and turn that sentence into a question.

In this way a simple phrase such as "Yesterday I stubbed my toe. It was really painful," becomes "Yesterday? I stubbed my toe? It was really painful?" Anyone who knows what I'm talking about and has similar feelings of annoyance toward upspeak is probably in the throes of some horrible flashback involving Ruth Scott telling the nation how she put "Crazy Frog? On her phone? As a joke?" or similar. Apologies, but I felt the pain was necessary to explain the evils of this verbal craze.

One of the reasons upspeak gets on my goat is because it completely perverts our natural accent. Now don't get me wrong. I've accepted that certain Americanisms have become a permanent fixture. What did we say before "Oh. My. God!" became a part of every other sentence?

I will freely admit to sounding at times like someone who just fell out of a particularly slang-heavy episode of Buffy, but I'd like to think as much as I say "Oh. My. God!", I'm still someone who remembers that (a) I'm still Irish and (b) making a question out of every sentence is really going to mess up our grammar.

What's happened to our individuality? I don't mean the usual teenage "individuality" of having long hair and only listening to music with lots of screaming and guitars. I mean the fact that we're Irish. Imagine if for some strange reason Fair City was to become the number one TV show in the US. If every second American person started saying "Jaysus!" and "feck!" we'd think they were cracked or at the very least ashamed of their actual accent. It's about time we stopped and realised the absolutely ridiculous way many people are talking. It's silly and it laughs in the face of the fact that we're Irish.

So here's a plea to the upspeakers of Ireland. Stop and think.

Yes, you can drink the trendy coffee; yes, you can buy the overpriced shoes; but please don't try to fake the accent of Carrie and Co. Because you're missing out? On the very thing that makes you Irish? Okay? Okay.

Conor Behan (17) lives in Co Carlow

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