Do you say “ummm…” too much?
When I did the Sanity Squad podcasts, I couldn’t help noticing how often I said “ummm…” while trying to frame my thoughts and articulate them. Too often for my taste, although some of the feedback I got from listeners was that it wasn’t all that much. It seemed like a lot to me, though.
It’s a common thing. But I wanted to eliminate it. Sometimes I was successful and the number of “ummms” declined precipitously, but sometimes they came out in droves. I never could quite figure out why the waxing and waning. Tension had something to do with it, but not everything to do with it.
This article gives you advice on how to reduce the ummmies. Worth trying, anyway, if your own “ummms” bother you.
When I was a young girl, my father would require that I start over from the beginning if I used “umm”. He was a very patient man! It worked–I don’t use it. In the article it says to embrace the pause. That is what I a trained to do.
I was thinking about creating an app that would vibrate your phone each time it hears you say “ummm”. That should train you out of it pretty quick.
Shouldn’t be that hard to put together.
I have a radio show. I remember the first time my son listened, her remarked on the “ummmmmms”. He was right. I’m better at it.
When I’ve listened to Prager, I’ve been impressed at how he can just let dead air hang while he formulates his next phrase.
From the linked article:
” Studies suggest that we verbalize hesitations because we’ve been conditioned to fill the void even when we don’t have something to say.”
“a pause makes you sound confident and in control, whereas overused filler words are distracting and make you sound as if you don’t know what to say.”
“On average, the optimal ratio of preparation to performance is one hour of practice for every minute of presentation, ”
I quit listening to Mr. Obama’s speeches some time ago (Feb 2008 probably) because of, among other things, his use of fillers.
I think he satisfies each of the problem areas outlined by the vocal coach.
Particularly, I remember one of the early “roast” speeches where he appeared, to me, to be reading his script for the first time — he does well with a teleprompter, but terrible with “open mic” speaking.
On the other hand, if you listen to Jordan Peterson speak, ex tempore, he never uses filler words that I have noticed. Probably because he actually does know what he is talking about, and has something important to say, other than how important he is.
(He does cuss a little more than I find comfortable, but YMMV.)
Well – I decided to confirm my recollections — that opened up a lot of rabbit holes to go down.
Here are a few examples of “Obama speech pattern” hits.
Put back the http:// which I took off to stay out of moderation for excessive links.
Putting a good spin on what I observed:
articles.latimes.com/2011/may/26/opinion/la-oe-daum-obamaspeak-20110526
“But consider this: It’s not that Obama can’t speak clearly. It’s that he employs the intellectual stammer. Not to be confused with a stutter, which the president decidedly does not have, the intellectual stammer signals a brain that is moving so fast that the mouth can’t keep up. * The stammer is commonly found among university professors, characters in Woody Allen movies and public thinkers of the sort that might appear on C-SPAN but not CNN. If you’re a member or a fan of that subset, chances are the president’s stammer doesn’t bother you; in fact, you might even love him for it (he sounds just like your grad school roommate, especially when he drank too much Scotch and attempted to expound on the Hegelian dialectic!).
If you’re not, chances are you find yourself yelling “get to the point already!” at the television screen every time Obama’s search for the right word seems to last longer than the search for Osama bin Laden. And thanks to its echoes of the college lecture hall, you may think it comes across as ever so slightly (or more than slightly) left wing.
That’s kind of ironic, given that the godfather of the intellectual stammer is arguably none other than the paterfamilias of the conservative movement, William F. Buckley Jr. With his slouch, his glazed-eyed stare and a speaking style that suggested the entire Oxford English Dictionary was flipping through his mind while he searched for a word like “dithyramb,” he makes Obama’s extemporaneous speech seem canned — not to mention pedestrian — by comparison. In fact, if the people critiquing Obama’s meandering speech patterns were to see an old “Firing Line” segment, I daresay they would think Buckley was drunk or otherwise impaired.”
* I am avoiding making the obvious comment on that.
Hagiographic to the max — https://www. —
benjaminloh.sg/2012/11/07/8-powerful-speech-techniques-that-president-barack-obama-used-to-wow-the-world-in-his-presidential-victory-speech-2012/
And praising the inauthenticity they would deplore in anyone else — https://www.–:
npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99838355
Interesting analysis – clearly biased, but still some fascinating information, although somewhat … clueless … about their own blinders:
theconversation.com/trump-and-obama-have-one-surprising-thing-in-common-the-words-they-use-81309
“For all their differences, both Obama and Trump consistently presented themselves as the solution to the nation’s problems. Accepting the nomination at the Republican National Convention, Trump assured Americans, “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” He regularly cited his own biography as the reason that Americans should “trust” him. The irony is that the predecessor who, on this dimension, most resembles Trump is the very one whom Trump cast as an utter failure and weak leader and as his chief foil. Obama too regularly invoked his unique personal story as the reason that Americans should place their faith in him. Minus Trump’s boastfulness, Obama too portrayed himself as the key agent of national transformation: “I’m the one who brings change. It is my vision. It is my agenda,” he told The Washington Post in January 2009. He saw other government officials as just “good mechanics.””
I ah ah ah want to to ah ah ad adress the ah ah problem with ah ah ah th those bit bitter clclinger and I ah ah ah ah want to to…..
Messiah44
It sounds significantly more intelligent than inserting the poor abused word “like” into those dead spaces. That and “upspeak” are some of the worst habits I hear in the speech of younger people these days.
This was a key thing addressed when I was doing Toastmasters : one listener was the ‘uh’ counter for a presentation. The trick that worked for me was to very deliberately slow my speech down and actually take a split-second to think about every word I said.
Not very useful in a back-and-forth conversation, but good for monologues.
When I was a kid I said “You know” a lot. I had a teacher who would count them and tell me the number. I hated that, but it broke me of the habit.
I, like, have to agree with Tesh that, like, LIKE, is the filler word of choice among the younger generations. My (fully grown) grandchildren are, like, annoying examples of this. And when they find that I’m, like, counting the number of times they use LIKE in their conversation, they become, like, annoyed.
Neo,
I couldn’t find the link to the article anywhere in your post.
Finally found it in “this article”. Try as I might, I couldn’t see anything to indicate that it was the link.
I’m using iPad/iOS/safari.
‘Cause I’m colorblind?
Chris
Chris connor:
Links are dark red, and they change to bright green when moused over. Apparently that’s hard for color-blind people to see. Someone on another thread suggested adjusting the color with a certain website. Click here to see what I’m talking about.
I have an iPad. There’s no mouse to “mouse over” with.
When I try to click on the link it turns bright green. But too late in the process to help.
I tried enlarging the link to see if that helps.
Nope. The deep red is indistinguishable from the rest of the text.
Maybe a bright red to go with the bright green?
Chris connor:
The red is actually pretty bright and only slightly dark, brighter than a cranberry color on my devices but somewhat resembling it. It was chosen to match the bar under the header photo as well as the dust jacket on the Churchill book in that photo. If yours looks dark, you may need to adjust your color settings, if that is possible.
The green was chosen to match the apple.
Great article.