Skip to main content

Home/ Words R Us/ Contents contributed and discussions participated by Alison Antoku

Contents contributed and discussions participated by Alison Antoku

Alison Antoku

Why do we say 'um', 'er', or 'ah' when we hesitate in speaking? * The Register - 10 views

  •  
    Umm ... (Asked by Tom Lanier of Austin, Texas) Not everyone says "um", "er" or "ah" when they hesitate while speaking. It depends upon the language. For example, speakers of Mandarin Chinese often say"zhege" which roughly translates as "this". In English we say "um", "er", "ah", or other vocalisations for reasons that linguists are not entirely sure about.
Alison Antoku

BBC - Voices - Your Voice - 9 views

  •  
    Page 2 of 3 "You just don't listen!" Why do people say 'like' every other word? Isn't 'innit' ungrammatical? Why do people say 'like' when it doesn't mean anything? "I'm, like, really happy that you've come to, like, find out about 'like'. Like, I thought you might not, like, bother.
1 - 2 of 2
Showing 20 items per page