If you listen to a person giving a speech, you will probably hear them say "um", "uh", or other similar filler words. For some reason, our culture has been ingrained with hearing people stutter like that. Not that people do it on purpose, it's just a natural side effect of being nervous.
Even if you look at national TV, if the show is sent out live, someone will probably say "um". It seems that one of the things that draws a line between the more eloquent speakers and the novice speakers is simply not saying "um". In fact, in basically everything in life that even remotely involves speaking, not saying "um" really adds some professionalism.
This post is mostly focused on "um", but there are plenty of other filler words out there too, like "okay" or "ah". Why do we insert filler words while we speak? Often we need time to gather our thoughts. We don't want silence, so we want to "fill" it in, even though it often ends up sounding much worse.
Why of all things, do we say "um"? It is what linguistics call "a neutral vowel sound", which means that it is a sound that is easier to make. Actually, which sound that we happen to use as a filler depends on what language we are using. In English we might say "um", but for example, in Japanese, a common filler is "eetto".
I'm not going to even bother trying to predict what I will be or what I will do when I grow older, but I think that one very attainable goal would be to simply stop saying "um". So, if I ever happen to say "um" or "uh" in your presence, would you mind smacking me?
If you listen to an interview with Dr. King or President Obama, they both use "um" like it's their jobs. And they're two of the greatest speakers of the last fifty years.
ReplyDeleteYes, but they are excused due to the enormous amount of stress they had. Also, they might be good enough to do it on purpose...
ReplyDeleteYou totally would write a whole blog post about the word "um." :)
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