Borrowed phrases

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How common is this with people on the spectrum?

I noticed yesterday that when I asked Damo "Are you hungry?" he said "just a bit". Now he got that straight out of a Spot (cute little puppy character) book.
He also comes out with phrases where I think "now where I have heard that before?" only to discover a cartoon character said it.

50-70% of my speech is made up of phrases that other people, books, shows, or movies have said. Although I also have a lot of speech that I have pre-scripted for myself, I can't usually think up speech on the spot unless I heard/read it beforehand. Fortunatly I absorb and retain speech very easily. I have gone more than a day before never answering any question with anything other than an apropriate line of Hamlet, for instance. Most of my conversation filler is family guy and simpsons.

I have original thoughts and ideas, and I communicate them very well with my phrases, but I am just never quite sure how the words will go together if I haven't heard/seen/written them before.

Thank you. His speech therapist told me his speech is at the right level for his age tho so a was a bit confused.

He also gives the same answer to certain questions most of the time like when asked "how are you" he will say "not bad".

I hadn't thought about it that much, but I always steal phrases from television, songs and movies. I also find, that after I get to know people a while we tend to develop a lot of code words and idiosyncratic usages of common words.

When talking on the fly, I use a large number of prescripted and borrowed phrases and sentences. For emotive and social phrases, I rely heavily on them. When it comes to socializing with my more HFA relatives, quoting things is a sizable source of emotive communication between us, sometimes acting out different roles in a dialog we heard somewhere. I've started to do this a lot less as I get older. I wasn't aware this was anything more than a little quirky, but echolalia?

I don't think it's echolalia myself. I think it's just borrowing the phrase. Echolalia seems too different.
I use borrowed phases and have mental (And rarely verbal) echolalia though.

It's called delayed echolalia, or scripting. Different people call it different things.

My 6 yo son does it quite a bit, and my little brother still at the age of 24 borrows phrases, and uses them repetitively. I don't think one would ever know, if they didn't spend a lot of time around him.

I concur that this isn't really echolalia. Because we have such a hard time relating to other people, we tend to rely on "scripted" answers, phrases, etc. A great deal of my own vocabulary is huge chunks of phrases borrowed from my favourite movies. In alot of the children that I work with, it's very common, especially among the higher functioning kids. It's a way for them to borrow the appropriate behaviours since they often don't know.

I tell people that I have a stack of flash cards in my head with these little pictures and phrases. When something happens, I flip through the stack until I find the right one and look at it to know what to do. That's why there are often awkward pauses in people on the spectrum's speech, they are flipping through the cards in their heads looking for the situation and then figuring out what the possibilities in replies are. The more experience we have, the more cards and the more possibilities we have and thus, the more opportunity to look "normal but quirky".

I still rely greatly on my patent phrases and movie quotes. People are often amazed when they realise that a huge chunk of my speech comes from movies. And since I'm such a movie freak and I have a huge library in my head of movies that I relate enough to and can actually repeat, it's harder to realise it.

That all prolly makes it clear as mud. It's natural for us I think. Most NT people use 10% of their brains. We use the other part of our brains to store useless trivia, facts and knowledge about our special interests, and movie quote storage.

I do it quite a bit, borrowing lines from my favorite movies. Since most people don't watch the same movies I watch, they don't even know I'm doing it.

I borrow any phrase I find personal meaning in, and quote it often.

I'm constantly quoting lines from TV shows, movies, etc. in conversation. I have no clue whether it counts as delayed echolalia or not, though it definitely does seem to be something I do a lot more than other people.

I borrow a few here and there...I sometimes don't realise it on the spot though.

Thank you all for you replies!! !
Seems alot of you do borrow phrases to use when asked a question or in general conversation.

I do it too. I pick something up and I use it alot. I don't even know how I decide what phrases to remember, I just use them.