The using of umm as a pause in a sentence while in conversation. My mother does this all of the time. She is getting old but I just think it is a habit at this point.
What is worse is that I notice the prevalence of it on talk radio and myself even doing it on occasion.
Don’t be worried Dopers. You won’t turn on the radio thinking of umm… I promise.
So !
SO I’m walking down the street…
IME people who cant tell you about something thats happened to them without starting off with “So” tend to be incredibly long winded boring bastards who are somehow under the impression that you’re going to put all of your activities on hold while you listen to the totally uninteresting non event that has happened to them.
And I’ll second the poster who brought up the artificial insertion of “Like” between every other word usually by “Young People” because they believe that it makes them sound cool rather then like a brain dead sheep who’d wear socks over their shoes if some other idiot told them it was the latest fashion.
WOW that felt good!
I found this thread on a search for info on this exact verbal tic. My 80-ish parents and my 50-ish brother do it.
[ul]They don’t talk that often, certainly accounting for only a tiny fraction of all the conversations they each have, so it’s hard to imagine they gave it to each other. [/ul]
[ul]They live hundreds of miles apart on the east coast, so it doesn’t seem like a regional thing. [/ul]
[ul]I don’t remember them doing it when I was a kid, and I don’t do it. [/ul]
[ul]I don’t recall an example of anyone else I know doing it, nor in random interactions with other people, nor hearing it from a TV/movie character or any other speaker such someone on the radio, lecturer, etc.[/ul]
WTFingF is it? It’s affecting my relationships with them, frankly. They are somewhat negative in their outlook much of the time, but they do this all the time, even when being positive about something, so it constantly reinforces my sense of their negativity.
Thank you for providing a place for me to vent. Perhaps one day someone will see this and have an answer.
None of the peculiarities presented thus far bother me. Nome sane?
The Lovely and Talented Mrs. Shodan is a delightful woman, and I love her dearly, and sometimes I have to struggle against the urge to strangle her with her own hair.
Actual conversation between us, some years back:
Me: “You always repeat the last word said to you. You must have echolalia.”
TLaTMS: Echolalia!?!?!
The other quirk that I intend to bring up should I ever be on trial for her murder is that, when making some series of points, it is always Point A, Point B,
And plus…
Don’t say And Plus!! Say And, say Plus, but don’t say both!!
Actually it may be a deeply laid plot to kill me via stroke or heart attack or simply high blood pressure as a result of stress. And no jury in the world will convict her - she’s too cute.
Fortunately, my communications are always free, completely, from extraneous quirks. Even online.
Regards,
Shodan
The stand-up comedian Margaret Smith has a bit about her brother that does this.
I believe that this occurs when public speakers are told not to start each sentence with “Well”. When the start a sentence, they start to say"Well," but remember not to say it, instead, substituting “So” for “Well”.
Lately, I have been hearing people starting their sentences with “I mean”. They haven’t said anything that needs elucidation.
I fully expect to hear, someday, someone on TV or radio say, “Well, so, I mean…”
Yeah, no — you might want to check the date of the OP.
Yeah…no, this thread was started in 2008; yours was 2011.
Whoa. Well I beat the voodoo practitioner who resurrected it, at any rate.
And don’t say “as an added bonus” unless you’ve mentioned one bonus already!!! grrrr.
I am guilty of “So…” when asking something. It’s the pause I need to formulate my thoughts but indicate that I am answering you.
I’ve heard all kinds of permutations of this: “Yeah, no,” “No, yeah,” Yeah, no, yeah," “No, yeah, no.”
And just as interesting is the use of “Yeah,” right before contradicting someone—in her words, literally what “no” means.
It’s strange, and I do sometimes find it irritating.
“Yeah, no” doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the “Yes, hello” telephone greeting.
Using “whenever” instead of “when”.
Reminds of a minor peeve…
In my office building, outside the company coffee shop there’s a large professionally produced advertising sign for the coffee purveyed therein, that says it surpasses “any coffee you’ve ever tasted before.”
“Ever” and “before” both convey the same meaning: your coffee-drinking history up to this point in time. You could remove one word or the other from the sign without changing its meaning in the slightest.
But it’s probably just me…
MY ex husband was given to to saying “the only thing about such and such is…” when there was clearly more than one thing. I retrained him to say “The main thing…”
I thought it was “I’m all …” and “she’s all …”
I’ve been seeing (mostly in writing, like in newspaper and on-line op-ed columns), the words:
a lot. (Sorry, I don’t have an example or cite at my fingertips, but I’ll bet most readers here have seen that too.)
The usage seems to come after making some surprising statement, that might reasonably be followed by “Yes, really!” but instead is followed by “No, really.” As best I can guess, it seems to be an abbreviation for “No, I’m not joking. Yes, [whatever] is really so.”
All from cow-orkers (which means I hear them every damn day):
“Alls I’m sayin’ is…”
“I’m not for sure…”
And the most grating is the woman who cannot speak a sentence that doesn’t begin with “So…”
mmm