English usage and grammar

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Cambridge English Dictionary
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How do you call the words a speaker uses when he is nervous, like "um", "ah", "like"? (self.english)

submitted 1 year ago by MrRobot to c/[email protected]

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In my native language there's a word for that kind of words, but I'm not sure how they are called in english.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I believe they're called filler words

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Or simply "fillers", see last definition here.

The general grammatical category is interjection.

[–] MrRobot 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

You might find https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filler_(linguistics) interesting if you want to see what the filler sounds are in lots of different languages

[–] Moonguide 4 points 1 year ago

Crutches, in my language. We got our collective ears chewed out about it by a hard ass teacher in school. I think I don't use crutches no more, but I could be wrong.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Filler words is the most correct answer because words like "like" do actually have meaning, but there is also something called embololalia (also spelled embolalia), the insertion of meaningless sounds/words into speech, which would include "uh, ah, mmm," etc.