I think most people who do it aren’t aware of it, and if someone brought it to their attention (and emphasized how annoying it is) they would make an effort to stop it. Perhaps a polite anonymous letter from a concerned parishioner?
I know that I had a teacher in high school who did this constantly. He was young, so we were jerks in there anyways, but we noticed it and mentioned it among the few sitting there. One of them started tallying up the times. After a week, she and a guy made a little chart - class time vs. uh’s or um’s - and hung it in the back of the room. He corrected himself very quickly after that.
Brendon Small
I was blown away the day I realized that all the "er"s in English writing weren’t ever pronounced out loud the way I, as an American, would; they were just the English way of writing “uh”, given how they don’t pronounce their postvocalic /r/s.
And then, as it soon after became clear that “erm” was just their spelling of “um”, everything suddenly clicked into place, as inner turmoils I didn’t even realize had been raging for so long were suddenly placated. Things which had seemed so wrong with the world were at once set right.
I’ll admit I’m one of the 'like’ers. It’s horrid I tells ya. And I’m not only bad in speaking but in writing too. If I’m writing in a conversational tone, like on AIM or something, I’ll type out ‘like’ a good 2 times a sentence.
And unlike others, if I actually notice I’m usually that word a lot, it then becomes practically every other word. As I try not to say it, I say it even more.
Dude, that’s like, totally lame.
If you’re looking for an academic-sounding term…
My speech teacher in college called it “preverbalization.” (Although I don’t find this term on wikipedia, and even a Google search doesn’t turn up much. But eh; it’s better than nothing.)
Her method of curing it was pretty simple. Most people don’t even realize it’s happening. Just point it out to them, and they’ll start to fix it by themselves. By the end of the term everyone’s perverbalizations, “likes”, “y’knows,” etc, had all but disappeared.
Anderson Cooper does this all the time when he’s doing a live piece from New Orleans or wherever. He’s great in the office…just not so good in the field. Drives me nuts.
Really? I did not know this! Suddenly things click into, uh, place!
However, I maintain that ‘like’ often has a distinct verbal role in these sentences: it introduces a kind of ‘word picture’ from which the recipient can gain an impression of what the speaker is describing. I’ve heard it described as a ‘quotative’.
I work with someone who, no matter what I say to her or how loudly I say it, immediately says “HUH?” Makes me nuts.
I just refuse to repeat what I’ve said. If you don’t listen the first time, poohie on youie.
That sounds similiar to what certain Canadians do with “eh?”. A while ago, I learned that the stereotypical Canadian “eh” (with a rising intonation, as in “Canada, eh?”) appears in two very different contexts. In most of Canada you say “eh” at the end of a sentence to elicit polite agreement, in much the same way other dialects use “don’t you think?”. In Toronto and other areas of central Canada, however, “eh” is also used in the middle of sentences to ensure that listeners are following, as in “So I was out on the pond, eh, fishing for my tuque when I fell out of the dorry! Falling into icy water really drains the colour from one’s cheeks, eh?”.
On a side note, one billion is 1,000,000,000 in Canada.
Just in case you wanted to know. 
Flashback to junior high English class: Everyone took a turn at extemp speaking for three minutes. The rest of the class was tasked with shouting out, in unison, any offending words uttered by the speaker. As such, the person performing their speech tried not to throw any meat to the wolves.
Yes. Someone (possibly here) described the ‘final eh’ as meaning, “This that I have said, is it not true?”.
I already knew that, but thanks!
Perhaps-uh a more-uh evangelical-uh church-uh might-uh be suggestedah.
In my church, United Methodist, there is a committee called Staff-Parish Relations that plays a role in encouraging the professional development of pastors. Does your church have something similar? If so, you could bring this to the committee, that public speaking is an area for further development. If you don’t have a committee, the senior members of your church probably know of informal channels to communicate this up the line.
Once the problem is brought to his attention and he has an interest in improving his speaking skills, Toastmasters is a great resource. Most clubs have someone count each speaker’s ahs and ums during each meeting. The locations of clubs worldwide are at www.toastmasters.org. I do know of some clergy who are members.
If the priest wanted, he could have someone in the congregation give him feedback and count ums and ahs each week. It is good for this to be balanced feedback, pointing out things that were delivered well in addition to the ums and ahs.
In my experience excessive ums and ahs come from four things: lack of awareness, too little practice of a given speech (sermon in this case), nervousness, and distraction. Adequate rehearsal also helps with nervousness. Experience with the general flow of the service that allows him to focus on delivering his message will help with distraction.
It would be great if you could help him constructively in this area. I’m sure it’s a common occurrence for new clergy and someone in your church organization has dealt with it before.
Thank you very much. I will try.
You think “uh” is bad. One of our priests is afflicted with random “kind ofs.” “We’re kind of called upon to help our neighbors” isn’t too bad, but a couple of weeks ago we got “Jesus kind of died on the cross for us.”
Kind of takes you out of the moment.
I’m shooting straight to the quick reply – if a Toastmaster has already logged in, this’ll probably be redundant.
The reason people say “un” all the time is that they’re focused on the audience and not on their message. Focus on the message, become completely absorbed in it, and two things happen: First, you become much more interesting for the audience and, second, you are much more at ease with the audience. Stuttering and stammering all but disappear, the presentation goes much more smoothly and everyone feels better.
On the money.
And Toastmaster membership is one of the therapies suggested earlier in this thread.
Well, you can never be too sure. England has that horribly confusing tendancy to define one billion as a one followed by twelve zeroes, so I figured it’d be good to specify that the Canadians are halfway sane in that regard. ^^
Of course, another definition of ‘halfway sane’ is ‘halfway insane’…
Count them during one sermon and write an anonymous note saying “Father, you said ‘uh’ 217 times during the last sermon”, and put the note into the next collection plate. Repeat if it does not get better. Or, to save time and effort, make up a number.