Why, in certain works of literature (namely “Spiderman,” “Thor,” etc.), is the word “er” used to indicate that a character is nervous, unsure of him/herself, etc.
Example: “Er…he was dead when I got here.”
Does anyone out there say “er”? I’m more of an “um” or “uh” guy, myself.
“The Good deserve a higher plane of existence than this life can offer, The Bad an even higher.”
Sigh!
Ahem…
I think part of the problem is, it’s really hard to spell mumble-sounds. If somebody says “uhh” somebody is going to spell it “uhnh” to try and capture the nasalness of it; somebody is going to spell it “ehh” because that’s how they perceive the vowel sound; somebody is going to spell it “err” since it sounds kind of like the final syllable in an -er word if you soften the r.
Anyway, I think it has become a standard for comics now: “err” means “I’m searching for words”; “uh” means “You’ve just belted me in the gut and I’m impressed at your fighting ability”; “um” is uncommon. “Oooh” is different altogether.
Boris has it right – “er” became a shorthand in comics and literature for a hesitation. It’s convention, pure and simple.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
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I think Boris has hit upon the correct idea. A sort of “comic-book language” has evolved to convey an emotion or a state of mind as a written word. “Er” would suggest the speaker is being evasive, stalling while trying to come up with a plausible story. “Um” just means the speaker is trying to remember something, “Uh” would suggest he doesn’t have a clue.
Makes sense. Thanks, guys.
“The Good deserve a higher plane of existence than this life can offer, The Bad an even higher.”
Because in the days before everyone inserted “like” into statements for continuity as they searched for the right word, people actually said “er” and “um.” “Er” and “um” fell into disuse when the erstwhile ubiquitous “y’know” superseded them and “y’know” has now pretty much fallen to the everpresent “like.”
Folks studying speech patterns have found that most people will insert non-meaningful sounds into their statements to keep the statement “moving” while they search for the next phrase to use. When a “spacer” becomes familiar to people, they tend to use it more readily. Currently “like” holds that position in North American English and “y’know” (which has not entirely faded) held the position before that. Those of us who are fairly advanced in years can probably remember “er” in connection with teachers hammering students stumbling through oral presentations using witty lines such as “Are you a rooster?” Then kids were smacked with “No. I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?” I’m not sure what teachers use on kids stumbling along with “like.” (A truly bitter and cynical old man would suggest that the teachers are so incoherent themselves, that they don’t even notice. However, I am not that bitter, yet, and I suspect that teachers are still telling kids to have their material prepared better and stop inserting unnecessary words.)
But the short answer was back of the top of my post: that is the way we really talked in the olden days. (It sounds as though the cartoonists are either really old, or they are carrying on the convention of “er” without understanding where it has gone.)
Tom~
Er…uh…Tom…‘er’ and ‘uh’ haven’t exactly gone extinct…I personally come closer to ‘arm’, but ‘like’, ‘y’know’, etc haven’t displaced truely meaningless sylables as spacers.
(Why, I wonder, do words I use everyday(I’m 22, BTW) keep getting thrown into the ‘never used any more’ pile around here…)
Eschew Obfuscation
Because, Tengu, you have an old spirit that is able to maintain contact with those of us who have gone before.
Tom~
Eschew Obfuscation
On the topic of comic book sounds: I remember reading a comic showing a two-panel sequence of a prisoner overpowering a guard. In the first panel he reaches through the bars of his cell and chokes the guard, who says “Unh” as he loses consciousness. In the next panel, when his body hits the floor, the sound made is “PAAAG”.
“PAAG?”
I’ve fallen to the floor dozens of times since then, and I’ve yet to make the sound “PAAG”.
Soup, you’re probably falling on your side or your shoulder. Fall on your head a few times, you’ll hear the PAAAG.
Alternate theory: the guys pants were very tight, and the sound PAAG is not the sound of him hitting the floor but the sound of his pants pulling even tighter around his nether regions.
Just a WAG:
From the description of the scene, I’d say the ‘paaag’ was meant to be the sound of the guard sliding down the bars, rather than hitting the floor.
Eschew Obfuscation
You would think so, Tengu, but the scene is drawn from the perspective of looking down from the ceiling, with the guard lying on his right side. Maybe it’s supposed to be the sound of his breath being exhaled from the force of the fall.
I’ve seen an explanation of both “er” and “uh” that seemed to make sense. According to this theory, “er” is the British equivalent of the American “uh”. The real distinction is the someone speaking an r-less dialect (like most British ones) would read “er” as being just the vowel schwa (the vowel that all unaccented vowels in English tend to end up sounding like), so it actually sounds just like what someone speaking an r-ful dialect (like most American ones) would mean by “uh”. This causes a misunderstanding between people who write “er” and those who write “uh”. The people who speak an r-ful dialect can’t understand why someone would say “er” for a hesitation, since they think that it’s apparently supposed to be pronounced with a rolled r. The peole who speak an r-less dialect can’t understand why someone would say “uh” for a hesitation, since they thing that it’s apparently supposed to be pronounced like a deep grunt.
It was this type of misunderstanding that lead to the American Revolution.
To er is human.
The one comic book exclamation that I could never fathom was “aargh”. Comic characters would yell this out when they were distressed, frustrated, injured, etc… Never heard anyone make this noise in real life, but then again we don’t read comics to get a slice of real life anyway.
Aargh, Jim lad, ye infernal 'lubber, ye!