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"Um" in various languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5353 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 25 of 47 05 April 2010 at 7:28am | IP Logged | ||
My German professor from Southern Germany used to say "ähm" or "äh" all of the time when speaking English, and grasping for a word. She was definitely carrying it over from the German though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 26 of 47 05 April 2010 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is a very interesting topic that touches on the specificity of spoken language. On could probably make a distinction between true pause markers that give us time to elaborate the following utterance and "dummy" words that can substitute for other words or expressions. I put "like", "you know" and sometimes "so" in this latter category. In French, examples would be usages of "allez".
The problem of course for us learners is how to decode all of this in a foreign language. I don't have the time to rant on the subject, but I would like to say that this is an excellent example of the great difficulty of working with really spontaneous conversational language. The people who transcribe telephone conversations or even ordinary interviews will tell you that there are all kinds of linguistic phenomena present that are nearly impossible to annotate. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5586 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 27 of 47 06 April 2010 at 12:56am | IP Logged | ||
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For those that are aware of American English, how would someone say "like" in another language.
Many teens use like a TON. It sounds horrible too, but I'm just wondering. "And he was like" "And I was like" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Deji Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5441 days ago 116 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Hindi, Bengali | Message 28 of 47 16 April 2010 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | ||
How about some French examples, please! (And anyone have some Bengali or Hindi? The more idiomatic the better.). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5345 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 29 of 47 16 April 2010 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's usually "ööö" in Finnish. "Tota" ('well') or "tuota" as it is properly pronounced is also an option. Use "niinku" when you, like, feel, like, totally like speaking, like, a valley girl or, like, something.
Also, the Japanese placeholders are usually spelled あのう (anou) and ええと (eeto) rather than あの and えと as they were in one of the earlier posts. あのう has a more of a hesitant flavor to it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5404 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 30 of 47 16 April 2010 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Slovak and Serbian there is "ehhh.." and "ahhh...", while more educated people use "znamená"/"znači" (meaning) or, just in Slovak, "takže" (so).
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| katilica Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5472 days ago 70 posts - 109 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: French, Catalan | Message 31 of 47 27 April 2010 at 11:55am | IP Logged | ||
O sea...!!!! That is the horrible yet unavoidable Spanish equivalent. I must admit that I use it when I am going on a 'like...' rant although I sometimes use it jokingly since in Mexico 'fresas' (think valley girls) are known for using it a lot in phrases. 'o sea, no?' is used as a filler at the end of a sentence and really has no meaning but is just used for emphasis. o sea literally means in other words, I mean, etc. And is not bad when used properly. However it is one of those filler words that we use as a crutch. Last year in high school we did something interesting in our psychology class where we weren't allowed to use any filler words such as like, umm, etc. If we did we had to put a dollar Into a jar. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5374 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 32 of 47 27 April 2010 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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From what I've picked up from textbook examples and online chatrooms, it seems there are a few markers in Icelandic. Some are what you might call "dummy" words (thanks S Allard) as most of them are actually words in Icelandic too. I haven't had much experience with oral communication but the textbooks seem to pick up on the fact that hearing some of these words in the middle of a sentence could confuse non-natives. If anyone knows better, please correct me or add more:
Hérna and þarna (pron: hear-(d)-na / th(soft)ar-(d)-na) is equivalent to "umm" and actually means "to here/to there". The last 'a' can be prolonged like the 'm' in English. Nú (pron: noo) can be used like "well..." in English and just means "now". It can also be used to express surprise or stress words. Sko also functions as "well" or "y'see" and is defined as a colloquial "look here" in dictionaries. Þú veist/þúst (th(soft)oo v-aste (as in haste) / th(soft)oo-st) just means "you know". The contraction I've heard in speech and seen written on online chatrooms by teenagers. I saw the Swedish "bara" mentioned, which has a similar meaning in Icelandic and could be used in the same way. I don't think it is used though. I don't have knowledge of IPA so pronunciations are English approximations. The book that outlined them best is Hippocrene Beginner's Icelandic. I also read a Wikipedia article on this recently that some may find interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filler_(linguistics). It lists about 40 languages' most common filler words. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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