"Uh... like... um... err... yeah... you know..."

[TheLonelySquire]

The one I notice the most is "you know," when athletes are being interviewed and often say it several times in one sentence.

I've also heard a lot of people who are trying to make a statement and don't know where they're going with it and just end with "yeah."

And the overuse of "like" was a popular way in media to portray the "valley girl" stereotype back in the '80s and '90s.

Granted, most people aren't professional speakers, but is this something we're wired to do? Perhaps because we talk faster than we think? Or do we end up saying these "filler words" because we're so used to hearing other people say them for as long as we can remember?

Most of these guys would be bagging groceries if they weren't pro athletes.

 

[Holdfast]

Someone once called it "brain spooling" - it's how your brain fills up vocal space while trying to marshal your thoughts sequentially and translate them to coherent speech.

You can reduce it significantly by thinking about what you want to say (or at least, your motivation/reason for talking) before saying it rather than just randomly ad-libbing.

 

[Middle Earther]