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As an American who does this in pretty much every conversation I have, this is a difference I would never have thought of. Semi-related: Do other countries hav
by ericras 14y ago
As an American who does this in pretty much every conversation I have, this is a difference I would never have thought of.
Semi-related: Do other countries have fragments of speech used as filler such as "like" and "you know"?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- pranjalv123 14y agoYes! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filler_%28linguistics%29#Filler_words_in_different_languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filler_%28linguistics%29#Filler...
- Hemospectrum 14y agoAbsolutely. In Japanese, for example, you'll sometimes hear conversations littered with なんか (nanka) and かしら (kashira).
- christiangenco 14y agoDo the Japanese really say "desu"?
- Hemospectrum 14y agoYes. For example, if you wanted to tell a stranger "that person is a police officer," the most natural translation is probably "ano hito wa keikan desu." In other contexts, you might replace "desu" with the informal "da" or the ultra-polite "de gozaimasu" (or "de gozaru" if you're a samurai). In practice you wouldn't say it too often. Other grammatical structures (like "-te iru") are more appropriate counterparts to maybe 75% of English sentences involving "to be." It is nonetheless grammatically possible to contrive every sentence to end in "desu." This is an unusual habit, though. It's a little like beginning every utterance in English with "it seems" or "Simon says."
- darkestkhan 14y agoです？ Wikipedia says: "word used to grammatically link a subject and predicate, often translated into English using the verb "to be". And, yes they do use it. But what is strange about it? Do English really use "to be" (in its various conjugations)?
- Hemospectrum 14y agoThere's an anime character who ends every sentence with です (as I described above). GP is probably referring to a famous internet meme where that's the only word she knows. Some context: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/desu http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/desu
- christiangenco 14y agoYup.
- darkestkhan 14y agoNever heard about it. Maybe I should come out from woodwork from time to time.
- Natsu 14y agoIt means "is", so yes, they do. It's used for predication instead of existence (iru & aru are for existence), but that's probably the more common is in English as well. If you want filler, it's when people are going え～と while trying to collect their thoughts.
- thatjoshguy 14y agoWhen I did exchange I had one teacher who would say ええと (eeto) every second word.
- henrikeh 14y agoWe sure do. In Danish "ikke?", "ikke også", "du ved" among others. In Bulgarian I hear "бе", "така" and "такова".
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- darkestkhan 14y agoIn Polish you can hear "co nie", "e[e]", "a[a]", "czy nie", "czyż nie" and some others.
- AYBABTME 14y agoIn Quebec's french, we will replace nearly any word by a swear word (criss/osti/tabarnak/caliss), which can be used as a noun, a verb, an adverb, and adjective, etc. Basically, like smurf-talk. Also there's a one-to-one relationship between english's use of "like" as a filler by our use of "genre". In this case, "genre" means "similar to". So one could say "J'ai genre... mangé une criss de grosse poutine" in the same way an english speaker would say "I have like.. eaten a fucking huge cheese-and-gravy covered bowl of french-fries".
- carlob 14y agoIt's really interesting how all of the swear-words you mention are communion-related and how in France's French you'd be hard pressed to find any swearing other than somthing-Dieu that is religious in nature. It's really telling of how religion has been removed from French culture during the Revolution.
- AYBABTME 14y agoAll those swear are in violent reaction against the Catholic Church which was prominent at the beginning of the century. This is before, nowaday, people just use these words by habit and as a cultural identity. I'd say that a vast majority of young Quebecers are agressive atheist.
- carlob 14y agoWhile the French are secular to the point they don't even need to be aggressive about it. :)
- mahmud 14y agoIn Northern Somali dialects you can pretty much put "dee" between every other sentence. People do it sometimes to buy time while gathering thoughts. It vaguely means "therefore". In the South it's "noo", and it vaguely means "why don't you?". Or "allore", from Italian allora.
- Udo 14y agoI'm from Germany and it's absolutely the same here. There is no conversation without a lot of "uh"s, "yep"s, "nope"s, "nahh"s, "huh"s, and the ones that are actual German words but are really just fillers or shorthand for (dis)agreement such as "naja", "nun", "also", "aber", "klar", "schon" and so on. The equivalents of like (="irgendwie", "so", "halt") are used all the time and we have a few such constructs for you know ("schau", "nicht wahr", "es ist doch so, dass..."). I firmly believe all countries do this.
- darklajid 14y agoIf you haven't read it, check Mark Twain's essay about the German language. You'll find that he agrees with you, especially with the 'also'.
- xtracto 14y agoYou forgot "oder". The time I was living in Germany I found it very amusing that colleagues always finished some sentences with "or" (e.g., "I think we should add this format, or?") or the equivalent in german "oder" ("Ich glaube das is gut, oder?"
- wazoox 14y agoGets annoying at time: in French, some people drop "tu vois" (you see), "j'veux dire" (I mean), "et tout" (and all that) everywhere. For some people it gets close to an actual speech disorder :)
- StavrosK 14y agoI don't think we do this in Greek. Come to think of it, it's weird, when I talk in Greek I use no filler, but when I speak English I litter it with "like" and "you know" like a valley girl. At least I don't say "ohmigod"...
- Muzza 14y agoAlltså we have typ that in Swedish as well änna.
- arvinjoar 14y agoschjooo (ljudet en norrlänning gör då hen håller med)