I’m pretty sure I’ve used ‘went’ in that sense, so it’s not always present tense.
They do this stuff in other languages, too. In Bulgarian, people use the word “vika”, which actually means “yell” in this same way. I think it sounds bizarre (“he yells come here and I yell I’m busy and he yells this is really important”) and never use it.
Hah! I had forgotten about that terrible combination of “o sea” and “no?”. Every time someone used “o sea, no?” I would ask which one, the Pacific or the Atlantic.
Yes, let’s pit the misuse of “like” and “you know” in any language.
I often hear people say something like “I have like, a dog,” to which I usually respond, “‘Like’ a dog? What’s like a dog? A cat?”
And I appear to be acutely aware of, like, the number of “younos” used by a speaker. It’s not so bad in ordinary conversation, but to hear a speaker, like, do it, you know, like it’s annoying.
And if you like, point out how many times they said, like “you know,” they look at you blankly and are like, totally unaware of it. Y’know?
In Western Austria the word “oda” is peppered in every speech. It actually means “or?” so the speaker sort of means “you get it?” or “you understand what I mean?”
Also often used is “oft” the meaning actullay in plain German is “often” but it is used as “then” within the sentence.
With the already harsh spoken dialect, it sounds more like amchinegun fire than a conversation.
Another Montrealism I’ve encountered is Francophones using, “Lo,” (or, “le,” I honestly don’t know which) when speaking English. “I went to the bank, lo, and ran into Monique there, lo. She had gone to the store, lo, and then we had dinner, lo.”
So, I guess you’d call that a filler word for Franglais?
Data point: I see “actually” becoming the new “like”. Lately I’m hearing it preface practically every declaratory sentence within a certain age/gender demographic.
Also in Colombia.
But these aren’t fillers. They serve the purpose that tag questions serve in English. They’re requests for attention.
I was born in Australia and raised in Canada. I went back to Aus to visit after I graduated from high school, and several people commented on how naturally I used Aussie slang with a Canadian accent. “Mate” “yeah well” were pretty common. I used “bloody well” too much.
“And then he nabbed me bloody-well bikkie right out’ve me hand! Bloody mungrel dog.”
The only analogue I can think of in French French is “euhhh” which isn’t a word at all; it’s more like “um”, really.
“Ese” is not a filler word in the way that “like” is. “Ese” is the Mexican equivalent of “dude,” so they were addressing each other, not peppering their speech with fillers. (Although I guess you could argue that if you use any word too often it becomes filler.)
P. G. Wodehouse uses some really great turn-of-the-century Upper Class British fillers in his novels:
“Thingummy”
“what!” at the end of a declarative
“whats-it-called”
Also, in the novel Confederacy of Dunces, the character Burma Jones (1960’s, African American, New Orleans) uses “Whoa!” a lot.
How about, since this is GQ, I point out that fillers aren’t really a “misuse” of the language. Using lots of fillers may be stylistically poor, but it’s not really “incorrect.”
Of course they are unaware of it. That’s what makes them filler words.
Next time I work with someone from Las Rozas I am SOOOOOOO stealing that 
I believe that Bertie Wooster’s slang was largely picked up from then-current American slang.
Toch has many meanings, but ‘Nevertheless’ is not one of them. Also, it is not like ‘like’ in that is not a filler but it actually modifies the sentence in ways that are quite significant. ‘Dat wist ik niet’ means ‘I didn’t know that’, neutrally, while ‘Dat wist ik toch niet’ can mean, depending on the stress in the sentence, ‘I didn’t know that after all’ or ‘I didn’t know that, how the hell could I have!’, in a sort of reproachful way.
There is something in Dutch that would qualify as a filler, which is ‘zeg maar’, meaning something like ‘say’, as in, ‘I was, say, twenty years old when I, like, met him in a, let’s see, well, a bar’ (Ik was zeg maar twintig jaar oud toen ik hem zeg maar ontmoette in zeg maar een café). This is not uncommon among younger Dutch people - it’s been pointed out to me before and now I notice it a lot.
Švejk just reminded me of one in Czech - prostě, “simply” or “just,” frequently offset with ty vole or vole, “you ox” or “ox.” Ty vole is used sort of like we would say “man” or “dude,” but with humorously insulting overtones.
And, of course, there’s ‘asi’ in Czech, which means something like probably or ‘around’ but which is used all the time. We had a newspaper clipping saying ‘Japanese princess is asi pregnant’ on our fridge for the longest time.
I want to add a few I think are not true fillers:
“ikke sant?” or “sant” added to the end of every sentence, right? My guess this came from the French expression “n’est-ce pas?”. Norwegians using it as “true”, “right” or “wrong”.
In the area I am from we use the word “javel”, often as a question. “Javel?” could mean anything from “ok?”, via “how are you?” and “what are you doing?” to “is that really true?” and “did you really mean that?”. “javel” can also be an affirmation: “Javel, då gjør me d sånn!” meaning “OK, we’ll do it that way!”
We have also been affected by the horrible pop-culture phenomenon of adding “not” to the end of every sentence. Though it has mostly disappeared again by now.
Terrible thing though - many people younger than 30 years are starting to use “like” when they speak english. It sounds awful when English are spoken with the intonation of some Norwegian dialects, worse when “like” poisons the language.
From Norway - Ole
Aren´t these terms actually place holders, rather than fillers?