Filler (linguistics)

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In linguistics, fillers are sounds or words that are spoken to fill up gaps in utterances. Different languages have different characteristic filler sounds; in English, the most common filler sounds are "uh" "er" and "um". "Like" and "basically" are more prevalent among youths.

[edit] Filler words in different languages

In Italian, e is one of the most common fillers
In Mandarin Chinese speakers often say zhege ("this"), or "neige" ("that").
In Korean, eung, eo, ge, and eum are commonly used as fillers.
In Japanese, common fillers include ehto, ano and nto.
In Spanish, fillers are called muletillas; the most common in Mexican Spanish are este ("this") and o sea ("that is"). [1]
In French, euh is most common; other words used as fillers include quoi ("what"), bah (or ben), tu vois ("you see"), and eh bien (roughly "well", as in "well, I'm not sure")
In Russian, fillers are called слова-паразиты (vermin words); the most common are "Э-э" (eh), "это" (this), "того" (that), "ну" (well), "значит" (it means), "как его" (what's it [called]), "типа" (like).
In Hungarian, a common filler word is Izé.
In Danish, 'Øh' is one of the most common fillers.
In Urdu, 'yani' (meaning..), 'falan falan' (this and that; blah blah), 'umm' and 'aaa' are common fillers.
In Welsh, de or ynde is used as a filler (loosely the equivalent of "you know?" or "innit"). Ym... and Y... are used similarly to the English "Erm...".
in Lithuanian, ten (there) and čia (here) are common fillers.

A common pitfall among language learners is using fillers from their native tongue. For example, "Quiero una umm.... quesadilla". While less of a shibboleth, knowing the placeholder names (sometimes called kadigans) of a language (e.g. the equivalent of "thingy") can also be useful to attain fluency, such as the French "truc": Je cherche le truc qu'on utilise pour ouvrir une boîte ("I'm looking for the thingy that you use to open up a can").