Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

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In my (private) high school's health class "like" and "um" and others were referred to as "stop-words" by the teacher because people would say them instead of pausing. It's really obvious once you look for them, for instance I hear things like college tour guides that would literally say "um" after every single sentence, probably unbeknownst to themselves!

One of the class projects was for us to remove the stop words from our speech by the end of the semester. We did this by all using recording software (had to submit either by cassette tape or wav/mp3) and answering questions such as "Do you want to live forever and why or why not?" by speaking for at least 5 minutes. These were our homework assignments.

We had to very consciously never use any stop words. We could pause the recorder if we had trouble thinking of what to say, but we could never say those words.

I was skeptical of the assignment at first but my class all agreed by the end of the semester that it made us much better speakers, simply learning to consider our pauses instead of filling the silence with "like" and "um".

Stop words have a function though in some situations. They tend to stop people interrupting you. The better alternative if you dont want to be interrupted is to pause in the middle of sentences as people then tend to wait.

Of course letting people interrupt is goid a lot of the time but sometimes you want to dominate a discussion.

Agreed.

When preaching sermons (which are all recorded) I soon learned that a short pause was better than a stop word. And as long as you don't look or sound panicked when you pause, it comes across as being thoughtful and people accept it as a natural part of speaking to deep issues.

In my high school public speaking class, we also had a goal to remove these stop words from our speech by the end of the semester - but in our case, the teacher would simply stop you if you ever said one of these stop words in class, at which point you would have to say what you were going to say again without any stop words.

it didn't take long for most people to learn, and it's probably one of the more valuable lessons I've carried with me from high school. I've learned to be more comfortable taking a pause if I need it, which I think has had only positive effects.

On the other hand, sometimes it can be annoying just how aware you are of other people using stop words :)

This rule never worked for me, because I, like some sort of analogy machine, like to use analogies. And like is a good word to place emphasis on before making an analogy.

Except I imagine like the author like meant using like out of like, you-know, thingie... context.

I live with someone who uses like far to often it's almost a speech impediment. Of course, he doesn't notice it and I'm learning to ignore it. However on the flip side, when I can't think of what I want to say next (and that is also often) I just go silent, frequently leaving my conversation partner puzzled and sometimes they ask to repeat what I said.

edit: grammar.

I would not say thingie but the rest of it is pretty much a conversation with me, about something I am extremely interested in. Speech impediment is a good description for it. It's has to be related to turrets or something, because it is ingrained and habitual, but yet in monologing (generally learned speech) I don't have the issue.

You learn language by listening to others. If a lot of your friends say "thingie" in regular conversation, you will too. It's how language adapts and evolves.

Remember, language is just a more refined form of making random noises. (Also, think about how easy it is to remember the lyrics songs you've listened to over and over again. The imitation part of your brain is very strong.)

You learn language by listening to others

Right, I think I did a bad job of conveying my point, which was monologing is generally not a natural way to speak, therefore most people learn to monolog and can go into that mode, same with reciting, though it is less of a conscious act, reciting is a form of learned behavior and therefore has events and patterns that you can draw on to reproduce ans suppress impulsiveness, at least for me that is how it works. With spontaneous dialog, again for me, it is less structured, and is more thought oriented, I therefore seems to bounce around more in that particular situation, more than other more unnatural and therefore learned forms of speaking. The "like" I most definitely picked up as a learned word from my environment (a surfing town), the fact that I use it as conjunctions and commas, I think is my own doing.

I thank you guys for the advice, and I have done this and I have perfected (to the best of my abilities) my ability to monolog. Which is what these exercise teach you, my problem comes in natural conversation in which I am excited about the subject. The conversation is more dynamic in a dialog, and I find myself hopping from idea to idea faster than in a monolog in which I an the one who determines the switches in context.

In a speech class (I think it was Toastmasters), they had someone with an audible 'clicker' they would click every time someone used a 'stop-word', which also provided a count at the end of the speech.

This was very effective training to stop (or at least greatly reduce) their usage.

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