# filler language



## tom_in_bahia

By "filler language," I mean words that really have no meaning in the discourse and take the spaces of pauses or gaps when someone is thinking as they are talking and unsure of their next step. People also seem to use these words when they are nervous or embarrassed, such as in public speaking. Below are some examples in English. I put an example for Spanish and Portuguese that I know...if any native speakers know any others, please let us know! (or correct my examples).

*English: *_like, um, uh, y' know?, or something
_Example: I was talking to her when, like, she started to give me this, like, stair, like, um, I don't know, like, I guess she wanted to, like, kill me, or something.*

*Spanish: *_este
_Ejemplo: Me gustaria saber si, este, si pudiera hablar con su hija. Este, es que quiero salir, este, y quiero saber si ella, este, puede venir conmigo.

*Portuguese: *_'tá ligado?
_Exemplo: 'Tava falando com ela, 'tá ligado?, e ela me disse que viu Pedro na festa, 'tá ligado? Me contou que ele 'tava dando bundalêlê pra todo mundo, 'tá ligado? Acho que ela não quer namorar com ele mais não, 'tá ligado?

______________________________________________________________________________
*When I lived in Spain, there was this girl in the exchange program who would speak Spanish with the same rhythm and stress structures as her Valley Girl English - and she would even throw in English filler language, sometimes translated, sometimes not, example:

_Yo estaba como "hola, cómo estás?" y ella fue "muy bien, y tú?" Pensé que ella no iba a hablar conmigo, like, yo totalmente estaba como "oh, ahora me estás hablando" y ella estaba toda "Bueno, creo que el lío ya se acabó." Y yo estaba como "Lo...que...sea! Has-ta lue-go!"_ 

I introduced her to a Spanish friend of mine who said she was either a native speaker of a dialect of Spanish he had never heard of before or she was clinically insane.


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## barbiegood

In HUngarian: "ööö..." or "izé..."


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## dn88

In Polish:

"yyy...", "eee...", "nie", "znaczy", "znaczy się", "właśnie"

dn88


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## linguist786

The title says "What is your filler language?" but you seem to want to know the actual filler words too. I guess I will answer both!

My filler language is English when I speak English, Gujarati when I speak Gujarati. Sometimes I cross over though! I have (what Russell Peters calls ) "Indian tourettes". It's usually the case that I use English filler words when speaking Gujarati, rather than using Gujarati filler words when speaking English (it does happen though). 

Some Gujarati filler words:

*"te Che ni (ke)"* (used more by children when telling a story and needs time to think of the next bit!)
*"matlab ke"* - I can't put my finger on a precise meaning, but it means something like "I mean to say.."
*"te pachi"* - "and then.."

For Urdu/Hindi, by far the commonest filler word is "yaani". It's used in Arabic and Farsi too.


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## Stéphane89

In french there is: *euh ; hum ; j'veux dire ; en fait ; quoi ; tu sais ; comme ça...*

I think it depends on who speaks, how old they are and where they come from...


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## Maja

StefKE said:


> I think it depends on who speaks, how old they are and where they come from...


 Same in Serbian. Especially young people from Belgrade, they have language  of their own...

No1 "bre". Almost everyone uses "bre". Then we have "(ono) kao", "znači", "otprilike"...


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## panjabigator

linguist786 said:


> The title says "What is your filler language?" but you seem to want to know the actual filler words too. I guess I will answer both!
> 
> My filler language is English when I speak English, Gujarati when I speak Gujarati. Sometimes I cross over though! I have (what Russell Peters calls ) "Indian tourettes". It's usually the case that I use English filler words when speaking Gujarati, rather than using Gujarati filler words when speaking English (it does happen though).
> 
> Some Gujarati filler words:
> 
> *"te Che ni (ke)"* (used more by children when telling a story and needs time to think of the next bit!)
> *"matlab ke"* - I can't put my finger on a precise meaning, but it means something like "I mean to say.."
> *"te pachi"* - "and then.."
> 
> For Urdu/Hindi, by far the commonest filler word is "yaani". It's used in Arabic and Farsi too.



I use the following in Hindi:

/kyaa kahte hai.n/--literally, "what do you say," and I use this when I forget what I'm saying.
/matlab ki/--same as Linguist has indicated.
/yaanii/--same
/aur/-and

And in Panjabi:

/kyaa kehnde ne/--same as /kyaa kahte hai.n/
/te/-and


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## jonquiliser

I'd use (in Swedish) things like:

hmm...
mmm..
de där... [det där]
å... [och; =and]
å de där...
å jaa...
å va va de nu ja sku säga...
va tänkte ja nu säga...
jaa-a..
sådär..
men att de där..


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## irene.acler

In *Italian*: cioè, per esempio, voglio dire, nel senso che, ovvero..

Obviously it depends on the person speaking.


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## Honour

In Turkish, eee, ııı, işte, şey. There may be others i cannot recall at the moment.


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## linguist786

panjabigator said:


> /kyaa kahte hai.n/--literally, "what do you say," and I use this when I forget what I'm saying.


Ah yes, I say that too. It's kind of like "what do you call it..?"

We have the equivalent in Gujarati: /shu ke éné?/
(I say: /hu ke iné?/) being a Bharuchi


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## palomnik

Russian:
ну...
да скажем..


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## JanWillem

In Dutch

* uuuuh,  uuuhmmm, etc
* enneeeee (and errrrrrr)
* even kijken / eens zien / even denken (lemme see, lemme think)
* weetjewel / jeweetwel (you know)
* zeg maar (~like)


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## Encolpius

*Hungarian *-- we call them "töltelékszavak" --- I think there are very very important for languages learners whose vocabulary is not so large (at the beginning) and using them it all can look like they are fluent...there are even very vulgar filler words (f* word in English)...there are many, e.g.: hát, szóval, tudod (you know), nos, természetesen...source form here...


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## ger4

In German they are called _Füllwörter_ (compound noun: 'fill' + 'words'). Some of them are mainly used sentence-initially, some can fill gaps within a sentence, some of them are added to sentences like question tags (even though that's a different topic, discussed in this thread)

Sentence-initial:
- _Also_... ~ 'Well...'
- _Na ja_... ~ 'Well...'
- _Ich sag' mal_... ~ 'Let me put it like this...'
- _Ich sag' mal so._.. - (if you need more time to think)
- _Na ja, also, ich sag' mal so..._ - (a combination of all of them - very useful) 

Sentence-final:
- _nicht wahr?_ ~ 'isn't that so?'
- _gell?_ ~ 'right?' (Southern German version)
- _ne?_ ~ 'right?' (Northern German version)
- _oder?_ ~ 'isn't it?' (used in Switzerland more often than elsewhere)
- _wa?_ ~ 'right?' (Berlin and surroundings)

Anywhere in a sentence:
- _hmmm..._ - probably universal...
- _ääääh..._ - 'err...' (same sound, adapted to German spelling)
- _nu..._ ~ 'like...' (mainly in Saxonia)

... and many others...


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## 810senior

In Japanse: ano, eeto, etto, eeh, aah, uun, kuun etc. (they similarly mean well, ah, eh, jeez)

I'm sorry that I find it hard to translate them in a proper(accurate) way 
Maybe I can express similar expression such as like, or something and so on. by means with many particles we have...


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## origumi

Hebrew: usually eeeeh (very long /e/), somethine eeeey or eeeehm.

I think it's the same about Arabic, the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was known for his long eeeehs.


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## Gavril

tom_in_bahia said:


> *When I lived in Spain, there was this girl in the exchange program who would speak Spanish with the same rhythm and stress structures as her Valley Girl English - and she would even throw in English filler language, sometimes translated, sometimes not, example:
> 
> _Yo estaba como "hola, cómo estás?" y ella fue "muy bien, y tú?" Pensé que ella no iba a hablar conmigo, like, yo totalmente estaba como "oh, ahora me estás hablando" y ella estaba toda "Bueno, creo que el lío ya se acabó." Y yo estaba como "Lo...que...sea! Has-ta lue-go!"_



Interesting, I've heard native English speakers do that with _como_ when they speak Spanish, but never with _todo/a_.

A woman I knew from El Salvador used the expression _¡Alucina! _("No way!", "Amazing!", etc.) quite a bit in her speech, but I don't remember enough about where she used it to determine whether it would qualify as a "filler word".


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## Messquito

In Chinese:

那個 is very popular (at least here in Taiwan). It is *also used to open a conversation* like the English uh/um (to avoid getting right into the topic while the other person is not focused, causing him to miss the first several words. You might start with 那個 to prepare him)
e.g. 請給我那個，中間的那個，漢堡。 *那個*，請幫我多夾幾片肉，然後我還要加一點那個，芥末醬！
Please give me the, um, that hamburger, uh, in the middle. *Um*, and please put more meat in it, and I would like some, uh, mustard, too!
(Several 那個's in a row is also fairly common when the speaker is very eager and desperately trying to recall the word but just can't remember it at the moment)
Possible translations: um, uh, you know(那個(*啊*)), that etc.

嗯/呃 is very popular, too. From what I observe, it is a little different than 那個.
When you use 那個, you are actually thinking about *how to put this*, like when you already have something in your mind but forget what the word you are looking for is. Think of it as "that" in English, which you use to refer to things that has just been mentioned before (you already have a thing in mind before you say 那個).
When you use 嗯, you are thinking about *what to say*, like when you mean to say something but you don't remember what that thing is and is trying to find it in your memory or when you are hesitating to a question about the answer. Think of it as "this" in English, which refers to the thing you are about to bring up after(what you want to say comes into your mind after you say 嗯).
e. g. 昨天我們店裡總共來了，嗯，三百五十位客人喔！我們光是一天就賺了，嗯，三十萬耶！上一次我們賺這麼多是在，嗯，十五年前！
Yesterday, we got, like, 350 customers in our store in total. We earned, like, 300000 dollars in a day! The last time we earned this much is, like, 15 years ago! Isn't it exciting!?
嗯...是吧！
Um... yes.
Possible translations: like, um.

Actually, there is another thing used like 嗯, which is 這個(this), but I think it's archaic (old-fashined). At least I don't hear younger people saying this in Taiwan anymore. I have this 50-something history teacher back in high school who is all "這一個呢(this one)," but I have never heard it from my classmates (except when they are mimicking her).

就是(說) is another one. It literally means "that is (to say)". It is used when you are pausing to look for *a way to put this, and maybe make you point clearer*.
我覺得他是，就是，可以算是學校裡最聰明的學生。就是說，他就是，讀書時間少，但成績就是，都不錯。什麼？他是指誰？就是，你應該知道的...
I think he is, like, supposedly the smartest students at school. I mean, he spends, you know, little time studying but he gets, like, good grades all the time. What, who is he? I mean, you should know...
Possible translations: I mean, like, you know, etc.

你知道嗎，我上個禮拜去了那個，呃，就是那個啊，那個那個那個，世界最高的那個塔，對了，哈里發塔！它好像有，嗯，828公尺那麼高，而且站在頂樓的時候我整個就是快嚇死了，因為就是，我有那個，懼高症嘛，不過那真的就是很壯觀。我眼裡所有東西都變得嗯，跟螞蟻一樣小。
You know what? I went to that, um, I mean, you know, that, that, that, that tallest tower in the world - right, Burj Khalifa! It was, like, 828 meters tall and standing at the top of it, I was, like, freaking out because, you know, I have, like, a fear of height, but it was, like, pretty amazing. Everything in my eyes was, like, as small as ants.


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## Nomenclature

Adding to the Spanish: eeeeee, pues, bueno


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## Messquito

I just thought of more:
In Chinese, when yuu pause in a sentence and are trying so hard to remember what you should say, you might use:
1. 嘶 air sucking, like an /s/, but with air coming into your mouth, not out of.
http://ouiinfrance.com/2013/07/25/the-strange-noises-french-people-make/
(It's like "The Fast Air Suck In/Slurp" in this article above)
2. 嘖 tsk/tut, a click, with air sucked in, too.


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## ilocas2

Maja said:


> Same in Serbian. Especially young people from Belgrade, they have language  of their own...
> 
> No1 "bre". Almost everyone uses "bre". Then we have "(ono) kao", "znači", "otprilike"...



another Serbian filler word is *ovaj* - I hear it really frequently


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## apmoy70

In Greek:

*«εεε»* [e:] 
*«μμμ»* [m:] 
*«λοιπόν»* [liˈpon] (so, when, then) 
*«ας πούμε»* [as ˈpume] which often is pronounced *«ας 'ούμε»* [as͜ ˈume] (let's say)


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