Um, in Any Other Language, It’s a Stall : Speech: Filling in the gaps is a universal pastime. Talkers’ tools range from <i> like</i> in the U.S. to <i> ondan sonra efendim</i> in Turkey.

In Russian, it’s znachit , vot or vobshem. In Javanese, it’s nah . In German, oder or nicht . The Spanish say hace . The Turks use ondan sonra efendim. In India they utter but , but not to contradict.

Such universal speech fillers may be the least talked about elements of everyday conversation, but they are woven into the fabric of every language in the world. And, experts say, they are as much a part of the speech patterns of eloquent orators as of inarticulate mumblers.

The popular American English uh or um, according to Webster’s New World Dictionary, is “a prolonged sound made in speaking, as while searching for a word or collecting one’s thoughts.”

Er , the dictionary says, is a “vocalized pause, a conventionalized representation of a sound often made by a speaker when hesitating briefly.”

One of Webster’s many definitions of well is an exclamation used “merely to preface or resume one’s remarks.”

Other bridges between thoughts include you know , but anyway and anyhow .

Americans may use um as often as 10 to 15 times a minute, sometimes more than 1,000 times an hour, says psychologist Nicholas Christenfeld of UC San Diego.

Christenfeld started counting ums a couple of years ago while listening to a boring lecture. Curiosity led him to make a study of the um phenomenon.

“I’ve counted millions of ums --it’s hard to stop--and I haven’t found a single person who doesn’t use them,” he says. “But I’ve found plenty of people who think they don’t.” Even when an audiotape is played back for some people, they still don’t hear themselves saying um , he says.

Um use, even with a foreign accent, is not admired. “We think that ums are bad because we notice them when a speaker is bad,” Christenfeld says. “We think they make someone sound fuzzy-headed. But the very eloquent use them; they are just hidden when the speaker is glib and facile.”

Why do ums or their equivalents pop up everywhere? “They prime the pump. They serve to get the speech process going,” Christenfeld says. Um production sometimes depends on how many options for completing a thought a person is contemplating while talking.

An English professor may use them more than a mathematics professor relating a formula. Television talk show host David Letterman’s um rate, 8.1 a minute, may be higher than his counterparts’ rates because he improvises more.

Christenfeld clocked President Bush at an average of 1.7 ums a minute. He plans to monitor the ums of presidential candidates during the debates.

Um or er are “ways of pausing to still keep your turn open so that someone doesn’t fill in the silence,” says A.L. Becker, professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Michigan. “There’s a whole range of utterances like them in other languages. They’re fascinating things that are used differently in different languages.

“In Javanese, nah is used as a pause, a noncommittal response to someone,” Becker explains. “Pauses in Javanese can be long. If you jump in, it would be rude. Nah can also signal that you’re finished.”

In Russian, znachit is probably the most common filler, says Alexander Ivanko, a Washington correspondent for a Russian-American newspaper. Znachit means “it means.” Ivanko says he doesn’t know why he uses it so much.

“Such discourse particles--there are quite a number in all languages--are part of the mechanics of conversation,” says John J. Gumperz, professor emeritus of anthropology at UC Berkeley. “They typically occur when people are talking interactively, in dialogue. They are a hesitation phenomenon in monologues.”

While such sounds may not have specific meanings or definitions, they do take on different functions. Their interpretation depends on the situation in which they’re used, says Gumperz. “They can be floor-holding devices, in between two parts of an utterance, or they can mark the end of an utterance.”