{"id":1511,"date":"2012-07-05T09:00:39","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T13:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/?p=1511"},"modified":"2012-06-19T00:23:13","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T04:23:13","slug":"um-uh-mm-and-the-use-of-filler-sounds-and-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/um-uh-mm-and-the-use-of-filler-sounds-and-words\/","title":{"rendered":"“Um”, “uh”, “mm” and the use of filler sounds and words"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my last post<\/a> (on July 3rd) I included a video from You Tube<\/a> with a women talking about making a cake.\u00a0 In that video the woman used the sound “um” many times.\u00a0 What is this “um”?\u00a0 It is technically called a filler word or filler sound, which is an expression of hesitation or pause in speech.\u00a0 You will never find “um’s” written out in books or newspapers (unless, of course, there is a conversation in quotes in the written text).\u00a0 This is because when we indicate a pause in writing we have tools such as commas (,), semi-colons (;), and periods (.). These punctuation marks do the job of indicating a pause.\u00a0 In speech people often use filler words and sounds within conversations to signal to others that they are pausing to think, but they are not yet finished speaking.\u00a0 Filler sounds (for example: “um”, “uh”, “mm”) and filler words (for example: “like”, “you know”) are essentially meaningless words and sounds in and of themselves; they are just conversation cues.\u00a0 These sounds and words, when used as fillers, do not add meaning to a sentence.\u00a0 Some people use filler sounds much more often than other people do.\u00a0 When some people speak they pause and use a filler sound every few words, for example: “I, um, was wondering, um, if I could, uh, borrow some, mm, money.”\u00a0 When people use many filler words in their speech they are likely nervous or are searching for what to say next.\u00a0 For some people using a large number of filler words and sounds becomes a habit. These people may not be aware that they are using these fillers so often.<\/p>\n

It is best to think of filler words and sounds as having two major purposes:
\n1) To indicate a pause after which a person will continue talking.\u00a0 For example, the short “um” sound is really just a way for the speaker to say \u201cI\u2019m still thinking, and I\u2019m not willing to pass the conversation back to you just yet.\u00a0 Give me a second.\u201d
\n2) To indicate hesitation or the need for a moment to think.\u00a0 For example, when someone is talking relatively fast filler words are often inserted into speech when the brain needs a moment to catch up the mouth.<\/p>\n

Filler words serve the purpose of filling the otherwise dead space in conversations.\u00a0 They send a message that the speaker is pausing.\u00a0 Fillers are very common in everyday speech in English so you are likely to hear them particularly when talking with a native speaker of English.\u00a0 I hope that this post has helped you to better understand these common sounds in the English language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my last post (on July 3rd) I included a video from You Tube with a women talking about making a cake.\u00a0 In that video the woman used the sound “um” many times.\u00a0 What is this “um”?\u00a0 It is technically called a filler word or filler sound, which is an expression of hesitation or pause…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[135139,135370],"tags":[218797,63020,173302,218800,6876,218799,218798],"class_list":["post-1511","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-english-language","category-english-vocabulary","tag-filler-sounds","tag-filler-words","tag-like","tag-mm","tag-so","tag-uh","tag-um"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1511"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1514,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511\/revisions\/1514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}