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Most Indians have this habit while speaking in English. It's not stammering that I'm aware of. It's not stuttering or bumbling either. I'm not sure what is it called.

The speech goes like this...

Hello everyone. I'm Maulik and here I am to present a..... our company's .....a....... balancesheet for the year of 2014-15. As we see, we are going through ...a.......lots of ups and downs in a......

How is 'a' pronounced there? It's the same way we pronounce this indefinite article with any noun. So, it's 'a' in 'a car'.

It's not just with Indians, I have seen many foreigners (even natives) with this habit but the frequency is quite less.

The video: (Check at 00:56 and 1:01) - Note: Irfan's English is still better! The people I'm talking about have loud and clear 'a......a....a'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oyGj8pFChM

Listen it carefully. There are several such pauses. I'm not sure whether the narrator is native - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27577537

Maulik V
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    I disagree that it has anything to do with indians. Really depends on the person if he is a good speaker in general – Ivo May 26 '14 at 14:04
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    Seconding: This is completely independent of language and nationality of the speaker. You will find lots of "er" and "uh" in the speech of anyone who isn't an experienced public speaker, native or foreign language. – DevSolar May 26 '14 at 15:24
  • @IvoBeckers I already mentioned that it happens with most Indians and I'm confirmed! I'm an Indian surrounded by Indians. And I do agree, it's not solely associated with Indians but then I mentioned that too! – Maulik V May 27 '14 at 05:19
  • http://www.howtogeek.com/trivia/vocal-pauses-like-uh-and-um-are-known-as/ – Ashildr May 27 '14 at 06:24
  • They think well before speaking! – user3459110 May 31 '14 at 04:06
  • @DevSolar, is the "r" in "er" pronounced speech, or is it supposed to be silent there? – HeWhoMustBeNamed Mar 17 '20 at 16:12
  • @MrReality: Usually silent. In German, the sound is generally transcribed as "äh...". – DevSolar Mar 17 '20 at 16:22
  • @DevSolar, Thanks. Do you know of any languages or dialects in which it is reasonably common to pronounce the "r"? – HeWhoMustBeNamed Mar 17 '20 at 16:27
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    @MrReality: No. Not that I know that many languages. But I would consider it unlikely. Is there a specific reason for your question? – DevSolar Mar 17 '20 at 17:02
  • @DevSolar, yes, the answer below claims that only non-rhotic dialect speakers of English spell the filler sound as "er". I am a non-native English speaker and I think I have mostly encountered "er" in writing (though I'm not sure whether I've heard it in speech or not), and have found the 'r' there a bit unnatural to pronounce in speech; but I had no idea that it wasn't actually supposed to be pronounced! ;D So I got interested in knowing whether the a 'r' in a filler word is actually pronounced by any subset of native speakers of any language with reasonable frequency. – HeWhoMustBeNamed Mar 17 '20 at 17:10
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    @MrReality: You should best ask a separate question for that, as I am not a native speaker to begin with. ;-) – DevSolar Mar 17 '20 at 17:13

3 Answers3

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Most non-Indians have the same habit! It's called a dysfluency because for a moment your speech stops flowing (fluent literally means "flowing freely"). And Codeswitcher's answer is correct; these are often referred to as filler.

Of course, we don't usually write this sound down, but when we do we usually spell it uh, not a. Even though it sounds like the indefinite article, we don't spell it like that because it's not being used as an article. Some speakers of non-rhotic dialects spell the same sound er—since they don't pronounce /r/ in this position, er and uh describe the same sound.

You can find it in a few dictionaries under uh. They typically list it as an exclamation or an interjection, and from time to time you'll find people saying uh on purpose to indicate that they're at a loss for words (even if they aren't really):

Alice: How do you like my new hat?
Bob: It's, well, uh, er, um . . .

Bob is indicating that he can't think of anything nice to say. Poor Alice!

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    +1 for ...but when we do we usually spell it uh, not a. Though I read the pronunciation of uh as u but I accept it is certainly not spelled as ..a.. I just wrote to make others understand. – Maulik V May 26 '14 at 08:39
  • Okay tell me, do they do it purposely or it's their disability to speak it fluently (In their mother-tongue, it'll never happen)? In my case, it refers to the latter one. – Maulik V May 26 '14 at 08:51
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    Native speakers do say uh unintentionally fairly often. They also say it intentionally sometimes. –  May 26 '14 at 09:14
  • "[W]e usually spell it uh." I dispute that. "Uh" is certainly common but "er" is about three times as common, according to Google. – David Richerby May 26 '14 at 11:54
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    @DavidRicherby I did mention that you non-rhotic speakers often spell it er instead. But I doubt your numbers are reliable. Take a look through the linked Google Books results and count how many times er is actually er: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22er%22&tbs=bks:1&lr=lang_en –  May 26 '14 at 11:58
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    @snailplane Oh, good point. It hadn't occurred to me that "er" has another meaning. (Over here, we call that place A&E and I don't watch hospital dramas.) – David Richerby May 26 '14 at 12:12
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    The public speaking group Toastmasters International has a person at each meeting dedicated to counting ums and ahs. And blogger Olivia Mitchell is another expert who refers to these as filler words. – J.R. May 26 '14 at 12:43
  • Added a good reference of an article on different types of fillers. This'll help many. – Maulik V Jun 04 '14 at 04:47
  • Please feel free to leave the link as a comment :-) I would prefer not to link to it in my answer. –  Jun 06 '14 at 04:21
  • Can you tell me whether only non-rhotic English speakers use the word "er" in writing for the filler sound, or any rhotic speakers do, too? (Put another way, do some English speakers pronounce the r sound in "er"?) // This is a really interesting fact to me. I am an Indian English speaker and I've encountered "er" in writing often, but I didn't realize the 'r' might be silent there; so I might have decided to try and practise to use it in speech (where applicable, of course)! :) – HeWhoMustBeNamed Mar 17 '20 at 16:07
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That's called filler (honest!) and is a form of speech dysfluency.

Codeswitcher
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It's a filler and what you are talking about is the pronunciation of 'a' in speech. Actually, 'uh' is similar to 'a' in Hindi or other Indian languages. In English, 'A' is pronounced as 'Ae' in Hindi and 'U' is pronounced as 'A' in Hindi. So we are using 'uh' in speech as a filler. I agree to snailplane's answer as well.

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Shaunak Shukla
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