Interesting...
(http://cdn.citylab.com/media/img/citylab/2014/09/Um/lead_large.png)
QuoteEvery language has filler words that speakers use in nervous moments or to buy time while thinking. Two of the most common of these in English are "uh" and "um." They might seem interchangeable, but data show that their usage breaks down across surprising geographic lines. Hmm.
The map above shows a preliminary attempt to use the tremendous amount of linguistic data being produced on the web to understand how language works. Jack Grieve, a forensic linguist at Aston University in the U.K., has been looking through 6 billion words collected from Twitter. Following a discussion with fellow linguist Mark Lieberman—a prolific blogger who has long been interested in the "um"/"uh" divide—Grieve decided to look through his collection of tweets to see how the two words compared. They started their exploration with data from America.
Full article: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2014/09/um-heres-a-map-that-shows-where-americans-use-um-vs-uh/380203/
WOW!
No love for "er"?
Had a South African acquaintance who spoke Zulu as well as Afrikaans and English who would use the Zulu tongue clicks as fillers in his conversation. Didn't sound as strange as you might think. Evidently that is common among Zulu speakers but I don't know how you would write it on Twitter.
The clicks can mean different things depending how they were formed. There are 3 click types.
My dad spoke Zulu as well as all my cousins. When my uncle had a stroke he couldn't speak English anymore but could still speak Zulu, clicks and all.
My cousin clicks at other cars in traffic when they cut him off in central Durban. I didn't ask him what he was thinking, the click was enough.