Or, “why does my lab partner talk like a 1950s children’s book character?”
The person in question seems a bit Asperger-ish, but that’s mostly beside the point. What struck me when I met him in class was that many of his little exchanges, which would normally begin with “Hey,” or “wunder,” would run more like:
“Say, wunder, do you know when the lab report is due?”
or
“Say, can I see your lab manual for a minute?”
or
“Say, your sleeve is on fire!”
You get the picture.
So my question, I guess, is whether any of you know people who talk or talked like this. Are they of a certain age? A certain region or subculture? This isn’t something you ask an awkward acquaintance about, but I’m curious, nonetheless.
I dunno, dude. I have met people like that, and I realize that I say certain phrases more than others, but i don’t really see a problem with it, so I just keep them. Same probably with the others who do the same thing. I’d chalk it up to that person though just growing up with someone who probably did that a lot and perhaps that’s where he picked it up from.
I know someone who begins sentences with ‘basically’ a lot. I asked him why he said it so much and he didn’t know, he hadn’t noticed it.
Similarly with another friend, when referring to one of the good properties of something he would say ‘the only good thing about…’. He’d often use this phrase separately when referring to two good attributes of something. I always found it a bit unusual and and asked him. Similarly, he didn’t know why he did it and had a laugh about it.
Many of us have our own individual idiosyncrasies. Often you’ll find they’ve been inherited from parents (gotta love those memes).
They’re basically fillers. Like um, erm, ahm, uh etc. Gives you a little bit of time to think about what you’re going to say, without any disjointed awkward silence. Unfortunately it does have the drawback of sounding very odd.
Fillers are for stuff between the beginning and end of one’s speech. These things are at the very beginning. I think that what we have here is not a “filler”, but an “attention getter”. It’s a way of politely distracting you from what you were doing, as an introduction prior to what you want to say. Sort of a newfangled “Excuse me…” or “[cough]…” or “[harrrumph]…”, I suppose.
(What bugs me is when people do this not in speech, but in writing. I can’t stand it when someone starts a new thread on this board, and begins it with “So…”)
I write as I speak, at least in conversational writing like board posts and chat. I use “Okay” when typing a lot, and I’m aware of it, but if I try to remove it, what’s left sounds harsh and too direct to me. It’s a way of softening the tone of the sentence.