One of the hardest most unexpected things about coming back to the US: Realizing how much Americans overuse the word "like." Listening to some girls talk, and they're averaging over 4 uses of the word "like" per sentence. How did we end up doing this to the English language?
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It's common enough in the UK to be annoying, but not as bad as I think you're describing.
I'm going to try not to sound condescending (and will fail), but the inability to describe something such as reported speech except by comparison to, say, the thoughts you had in your head at the time, is largely the cause, I think. There's a mental overhead to speaking formally.
