Umm, Ahh & Ya Know

July 23, 2030

Inteview with Michael Erard, author of the book Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean

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Mike Carruthers:
Um, ah, ya know - when you listen carefully to people speaking, you hear those three things a lot - um, ah, ya know…

Michael Erard:
That's a phenomenon called speech disfluencies and they happen because we need to plan what we're going to say next.

Michael Erard, author of the book Um. . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean, says every language has its version of um and ah and it's assumed that people have been saying um and ah since they have been talking. But Michael says for centuries nobody seemed to notice it much.

I went back to where we get our ideas about what good oratory is - Socrates, Aristotle, etc. and none of them mention our um or whatever the Greek equivalent would be.

In fact Michael searched literature over several cultures and several centuries.

And what I didn't find was any discussion of ah or um. It doesn't emerge until the early 20th Century after the advent of the phonograph. And then it really becomes very widespread in the 20's after the advent of radio.

Because with the invention of the phonograph and radio, people could actually hear what they sounded like when they spoke - and that's when people really started hearing the ums and ahs.

The first recorded word that we have for Thomas Edison from the earliest recording is "ah" - which is made in 1888.