oh my god

The high school kids I teach in Japan say it sometimes.

The "Oh ... my ... God!" with Pinteresque pauses is used by expat teenagers in Hong Kong and probably by very few over the age of 21.

I think it was made famous by the character (Janice?) in Friends who was at one time Chandler Bing's boyfriend and who kept turning up in his life like a bad penny.

does overusing it make you sound dumb?

Oh yes. It most certainly does.

From the ever-reliable Wikipedia:

Janice Litman Goralnik (née Hosenstein) is Chandler's ex-girlfriend, who appears in every season of the show's run. Disliked by all of the friends, she is portrayed as extremely annoying, with an extravagant fashion sense, a loud, nasal exaggerated New-York accent, and a loud annoying laugh. Her trademark expression is "OH. MY. GOD!"

Agree that it's closer to 'bon Dieu' than 'mon Dieu' in French simply because it's still considered blasphemous by quite a lot of people, in Australia at least. I haven't heard anybody use it spontaneously for a while.

I like it. Out of 13 posts, 3 of them mention Janice.

Exclamation or Expletive, OMG Is Omnipresent

My impression is that 'my God' is very widely used across all generations in the UK, but 'oh my God' is used far more by younger people than older people (don't ask me for specific ages).

From nutrax's link:

In 1804, one writer observed that "by gosh" is the "most elegant and classical oath imaginable."

It's not clear whether the writer of the article understood that the 1804 writer was being ironic. He was, trust me.

Also from that link: The principal, Sister Kathy Avery, recently read to students a list of words that are unacceptable on the school's playground.

I'll bet you anything that my father's sizzling string of cuss words would have dazzled those kids even more than the good Sister's. And likely in her case, as when Mark Twain observed when his wife stared him down and repeated his blue string word for word, Well, you got the words right, but you ain't got the music. Or something to that effect.

But what I really had wanted to say is that in Morocco recently, I heard a nine year old say Oh...my...god!--which was then repeated by his seven year old sister, both giggling. Since they don't speak English, and would not likely be watching English language television, my assumption is that they picked it up in the street. Omnipresent.

What's interesting to me is that they understood quite perfectly the social "weight" of the expression. It was "wow!" but with a tinge of something a little more daring. Something their Mom, who has a hair-trigger hand, wouldn't slap for, but still in the territory of pushing the boundary of the well-known but forbidden.

"Allah" gets thrown around in every other sentence, by the way.

My normal utterances are: "Jesus" or "Jesus Christ"

My bible thumping Christian friends are always aghast when I say it so if I remember I'll say "Oh Shit!" instead.