The Chinese "Um"?

[Shi Tong]

jiushishuo, jiushi, wo de yisi shi shuo, zhege, nage

Aren't these all explaining yourself? I dont think they're really redundant phrases, I just think they're extras you can add in.. would you think it pointless if I wrote:

"What I mean to say is" (jiushishuo/ wo de yisi shi shuo) in my reply to your post? It would mean I'm coming up with a summery of the explaintion I was trying to give.

"It really is" (jiushishuo, jiushi) is also not really a redundant method of speaking.. it's also a way of connecting two important parts of your thoughts and summerising your following sentence, like this: I think you're being awful, it really is very unfair that you are being so badly behaved".

"this" and "that" also, they're not really redundant speech.

So while I agree that they can be used as hesitation tactics, I dont think they're meaningless by a long way.

[songlei]

don't get me wrong, i fully agree with you on that (i tried to indicate it by adding "depending on the context of course"). it's just that they are often used in a way to simply stall, without the speaker having the intention to add meaning to the message. so if you're looking for the chinese equivalent of uhm, these phrases effectively perform that function, while in other contexts they perform an additional function. chinese can be so complicated sometimes... i should've gone for flemmish instead. too late now!

[Altair]

"this" and "that" also, they're not really redundant speech.

I would be skeptical as well, except that I know that Spanish also uses its version of "this" ("este") as an equivalent of "um." As in Chinese, people will say this in the middle of a sentence where it would otherwise make no sense.

[in_lab]

I have heard people introduce themselves as "我是,那個,陳XX". It always strikes me as a little funny.

[songlei]

haha, our chinese teacher once said to the class: 八月七号有一次活动。你们那时候会不会还在那个，那个，那个.......中国？

i paid some extra attention to the uhms in chinese, and i noticed that they do in fact uhm at some points, so my theory about the chinese being from another planet doesn't completely hold. sorry for the bad info!

[Shi Tong]

My father in law is hilarious on the phone, he probably says it a hundred times for each sentence, so he's all about the 那个，那个，那个...

Interestingly he also speaks fu-jianhua (or Taiwanese), and listened to him saying hile, hile, hile once.. I said to my wife "is that Taiwanese for 那个?" at which point she just replied by laughing.:lol:

[Rysiek]

My father in law is hilarious on the phone, he probably says it a hundred times for each sentence, so he's all about the 那个，那个，那个...

Interestingly he also speaks fu-jianhua (or Taiwanese), and listened to him saying hile, hile, hile once.. I said to my wife "is that Taiwanese for 那个?" at which point she just replied by laughing.:lol:

I wonder, could this be a completely different phenomenon, namely stuttering? I stutter and often insert a certain phrase that will help me get the next word out, which ends up sounding very much like what you and songlei describe with nage and hile: "Blah blah... I mean, I mean, I mean yadda yadda." I wouldn't be surprised if I find myself doing the same with 那個 in Chinese for the same purpose.

[Shi Tong]

Rysiek,

Well, I suppose it could be yeah.. though I dont think that stuttering in my experience is quite the same as word repetition, though Wiki would disagree.

(Stuttering (alalia syllabaris), also known as stammering (alalia literalis or anarthria literalis), is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases, and involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the stutterer is unable to produce sounds.)

Stuttering seems to be a phenomenon where people struggle to start a word and not end it (s..s..stutter), where as 那个，那个，那个, in an otherwise very eloquent person feels different. They can finish their thought, where a lot of stutteres could not, and actually reach a mental block.

I feel like 那个，那个，那个 is more of a "I'm thining about the exact words or phrase I want to use before I say them" type of phenomenon.

What do you think.

Oh, and I think there are plenty of actual "um" phrases which are much closer to a hesitation particle than actual words like 那个, so..