Um, er, like, y’know and what the hell happened to the schwa?

We Kiwis are as a rule not a highly articulate people. We tend to the taciturn and, when we do have something to say, struggle to get the words out in a coherent flow. We ‘um’ and ‘er’ our way through the simplest proposition. Even those in the speech-making business, whom you might expect to be fluent  –Trevor Mallard, John Key and the lovely David Shearer come to mind – pepper their responses with time-to-think, space-filling noises. And you could have driven trucks through the late lamented Rob Muldoon’s rasping ‘ers’.

I sometimes think that this phenomenon may reflect the emphasis placed in Kiwi culture on the virtue of humility. Our heroes blush when praised and pronounce themselves “humbled” by the nation’s applause. The word seems to indicate they feel their success wasn’t  deserving of such acclamation. Overt celebration of a win or achievement might suggest vanity. People might think they were “up themselves”. So they keep their heads down and communicate through half-closed mouths and clenched teeth.

To be absolutely fair, the fear of public speaking – from making a two-minute speech at an office “do” to addressing the United Nations – is recognised as being near the top of the commonly accepted list of debilitating phobias. But our Kiwi inability to express ourselves fluently can be observed in everyday conversation and not just in those scary situations. We stammer and stutter, mutter and mumble. 

We see all of this in our media training courses where our clients are the crème de la crème of the business, academic and political worlds. After one chap had managed to have more ‘ers’ and ‘ums’ in a 5-minute interview than nouns, verbs and adjectives, I once heard myself say in a loud and somewhat unfriendly tone: “JUST STOP DOING THAT!!!” His colleagues (and Judy) seemed rather taken aback by this display of pique, but he nonetheless went back into the studio and re-did the interview with barely a space-filler to be heard. Shock treatment!

In everyday life, I’m not particularly fluent myself. But I’ve learnt that the key to fluency is having what you want to say pre-programmed in your brain a few seconds before it comes out of your mouth. You can learn to do this!

Judy has a brilliant formula for getting rid of ‘ums’ and ‘ers’: It’s a 3-stage process: being conscious of  the ‘um’ or ‘er’ after you’ve  said it; being conscious of the ‘um’ or ‘er’ as you’re saying it; and, finally, being conscious of the ‘um’ or ‘er’ just as you’re about to say it. It works. (No charge!)

‘Like’ is a more recent and unwelcome addition to the list of Kiwi space-fillers, though I suspect it’s of American origin. I suppose if means: ‘so to speak’ or ‘if I can put it this way’, or ‘you know what I mean’, or ‘this is hard to explain’, or ‘I just can’t think of the right word’, or ‘hold on a minute, I’m thinking’. Or something. Or nothing.

On a 10-minute bust trip home from the city to Ponsonby recently, two youngish women in the seat behind us managed to fit not just one, but two or three ‘likes’ into every sentence. Sample: “He was, like, kind of, like, good looking but, like, you know, I, like, didn’t, like, really like him.’  Well, I know what  you’re, like, thinking – I made this up. But it’s, like, almost verbatim.

This is how a majority of young New Zealanders now communicate and, though I’m sorry to be an old language fuddy-fuddy, I think it’s awful to listen to. Bugger it, I’m not sorry at all. It is awful to listen to and they sound like mentally defective copycats. It’s um, er, like, y’know, they’ve never been to school.

Now here’s my final language bleat (till next time):

What has happened to the indefinite article ‘a’. Until recently ‘a’ was almost universally pronounced ‘uh’ as in ‘huh?’. The language expert in the house tells me this unstressed central vowel is known as the “schwa”. It’s how I would pronounce ‘a’ 99 times out of a hundred as in, for example, “Can I have a sandwich please.”

Considerably less common is the pronunciation of ‘a’ as in ‘What did you say?’ The purpose of this stressed pronunciation seems primarily to be to emphasise the singleness of the word, as in,  “I wanted a sandwich, not six sandwiches.”

Well, it was considerably less common. But check out the pronunciation of ‘a’ on TV One or TV3 news by newsreaders, reporters and weather presenters alike. ‘A’ as in ‘uh’ has completely disappeared; ‘a’ as in ‘hay’ is now universal. The significant distinction between the intended meanings of the two pronunciations has therefore been totally lost, making us linguistically worse off.

Which is curious because near-illiteracy is the defining characteristic of New Zealand television field reporters, if not of the news readers, but this looks like some sort of attempt to be formally correct in pronunciation at least. Unfortunately they’re buggering the language, which in all probability will lead to the rest of us doing the same.

Mind you, they’re still intent on saying ‘an hotel, an horrific, an habitual, an historic’ which only the pretentious gits among us would wish to emulate. So this is all probably a total waste of breath.

Media trainer and commentator Dr Brian Edwards posts at Brian Edwards Media.