Reader Darren wrote in to inquire , " When and why did people commence saying um when they are speak ? "
According to theOxford English Dictionary , the speech wavering " hum " goes at least as far back as 1469 . We also find " hem " from 1526 , " haw " from 1679 , and " er " from 1862 . But these are only the first attestations of the words in print . It is potential that they go back much further than that .
Michael Erard , in his bookUm … : Slips , Stumbles , and Verbal Blunders , and What They intend , trace the history of um , and does n’t find any reference of it — or its ancient Hellenic or Romance equivalent — in classic works on oration , though there is plenty of advice against speaking with hesitancy or want of fluency . It does n’t seem in court transcripts , or other written disc of natural conversation either , until the modern era . With a few exception , citizenry did n’t really pop out talking about um , or plain about it , until the advent of voice recording . It is potential they were using it all along , but they either did n’t notice it , or did n’t view as it worthy of writing down — it was n’t considered a Good Book , but a noise , like a cough .
Every spoken communication has its own version of um . Gallic haseuh , Koreaneum , Finnishöö , Russianeh ; even house languages have foretoken for um . The fact that most languages have some kind of um suggests that it serves a raw and important language function .
So what is this important language function ? Why do people say um ? Not because they are nervous . Scholarly studies of the password reveal that the use of um does not correlate with disquiet or any particular personality traits . Rather , um is used to bespeak an approaching pause — commonly uh for a short suspension and um for a long suspension . The pause may be needed for obtain the right word , remember something temporarily forgotten , or revive a error . Um holds the base for us while we do our genial work . It buys some metre for thinking .
