The recent linguistic mutation of using the verb "to go" as a substitute for "to say" is a fad that will expire before the end of the current century.

How do you know how old that use is? Have you researched it? I haven't, but I grew up with it. Maybe it's a classic, and you just never noticed.

Will the geordie verb 'to gans' disappear at the same time

I gans, you gans, they gans, she gans, he gans, we gans

Can you give me an example of the usage you're talking about? It's possible I use this construction myself in informal situations.

Devnull, see the comments in the claim this was inspired by. I used it, as it is natural to me, and knappster found it odd.

Yeah, clearly it will be replaced by, "and they were all like" and "and I was all like".

I think the usage started in the 1970s.  Check out the lyrics to Frank Zappa's song, Valley Girl and you'll see some interesting language.  Note how some of the expressions to which he reacted have been retained, while others have been dropped.

Grody to the max?
Barf me out?
Tubular?

Hmm ...

Nobody I've ever known has ever used this.

Well, I was raised in New York, mainly through the eighties. So, apparently it spread to that place and that time.

I don't mind my language having modern influences.

Some people believe that it was a logical following of the liguistic use of the past tense of "to go" from the fourties (when it was used in the song "clang clang clang went the trolley."

So my objection to it is that I object to using the term recently. The phrase, "they go wow, there's a word for that?" wouldn't have been used in 1940, but "I went then we should oust hitler!" It was used for declaratives as opposed to the modern which can be used for most any statement.

English has a great capacity for maintaining all words, especially irregular verbs. There are some great books out recently on this history of English words and phrases.

Though in this case I can easily see "Johnnie goes 'woo'" eventually being as "frowned upon" as "ain't". It'll still exist, but users of it will be considered "ignorant". Snobbery will never go away either!! HA!

Still, I go "yes" (and hide my crystal balls).

This claim is just wishful thinking.

Well, I did offer some reasoning.  :-p

It's at least as old as "Pop goes the weasel".

Apparently this construction was in use in the 17th century:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Goes_the_Weasel

As much as this is defending my own usage... I think Pop Goes the Weasel is a bad example. The popping isn't something being said, even though it is a sound made. And the structure is necessary for the pun, for it to change from pop goes the weasel being a statement about making things to a statement about running out of money.

The Wikipedia article seems to have slightly different information on the meaning of it than I've read previously, but either way the dual meaning is there.

I'd been taught (somewhere or other) that the weasel is your spending cash. And thus:

A penny for a spool of thread
A penny for a needle
That's the way the money goes
Pop goes the weasel

Is showing how quickly your money gets depleted.

Weasels don't say anything.  The argument based on that nursery rhyme is a non sequitur.

Zebediah, "I was like" often involves mimicking a tone of voice, inflection, and possibly gestures. It really doesn't mean the same as "I said" because it's to introduce that you will then *act* in a way that is *like* what the person you are "quoting" (imitating) did.