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If you’ve ever listened to a recording of yourself speaking, the frequency with which you used fillers such as ‘um’, ‘uh’, ‘like’ and ‘y’know’ might have grabbed your attention – and perhaps your scorn. Indeed, these verbal hesitations have been viewed as undesirable since the days of ancient Greece and, more recently, the American linguist Noam Chomsky characterised them as ‘errors’ irrelevant to language. But could there be more to these utterances than initially meets the ear? In this short animation from TED-Ed, Lorenzo García-Amaya, assistant professor of Spanish at the University of Michigan, reveals how ‘filled pauses’ can give conversation partners important context clues, communicate emphasis, help tether related thoughts together, and so much more.
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Rituals and celebrations
A whale hunt is an act of prayer for an Inuit community north of the Arctic Circle
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Rituals and celebrations
A beginner’s guide to a joyful Persian tradition of spring renewal and rebirth
3 minutes
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Politics and government
How it looked to Afghan women to see the Taliban return to power
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Love and friendship
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Metaphysics
Simple entities in universal harmony – Leibniz’s evocative perspective on reality
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Biography and memoir
Passed over as the first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight carved out an impressive second act
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The ancient world
The six priestesses who kept the flame of ancient Rome alight at risk of death
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Engineering
A close-up look at electronic paper reveals its exquisite patterns – and limitations
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Architecture
West Africa was once an architectural laboratory. Is it time for a revival?
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