I'm not getting on terribly well with my new flatmate but I didn't think there would be any great disagreements about language.
Today, however, he asserted in a conversation we were having that he hates people who say "er" and "um".
Apparently silent pauses are OK (he had, as I pointed out, three long silent pauses in one sentence) but fillers like "er" and "um" are not.
He proudly informed me that he has written letters of complaint to radio and TV stations when he has heard people "use them more than once in a sentence".
I tried to point out that they are a perfectly normal part of everyone's everyday discourse but he was having none of it.
I couldn't get to the bottom of his objection but it seems he finds them in some way dishonest. I suggested that the only way to avoid them in an interview would be to have a scripted and rehearsed answer to every question which would be far more dishonest.
Apparently though, I'm wrong. Use "er" or "um" more than once in a sentence and you must be lying.

One more on the growing list of our disagreements.

While over use of fillers can be annoying, it's the rare person who utterly avoids them. Can you trade him in on a Chinese model?

[quote]Can you (um) trade him in on an (um) Chinese model?

In normal conversation "fillers" are common and rarely noticed; in public speaking or presentations they should be avoided, and in that I agree with your flatmate.

Listen to any great speaker and see how the power of his or her speech is enhanced by its pauses. Churchill was a master of pauses and you need only to consider how much less powerful his "Few" speech would have been had he said, "Never - um - in the - err - field of -err, um - human conflict has - you know - so much been -err - owed by so few - I mean - so many - to so few". Every one of those fillers has been avoided in his speech by the use of the pause. Read it out aloud with the fillers - just say them, they don't need to be stressed - and you will hear the speech the the way that many would have said it conversationally.

In an interview or presentation on TV or radio those interviewed have often not had any presentation skills training (even though I am available and not too expensive) and it is painful to listen to their "ums", "ahhs" and "you knows".

A silent pause is the most powerful word in any speech. Don't take my (written) word for it - just listen to a few good speakers. They are all on YouTube.

An interview falls between prepared speech and spontaneous speech. In a prepared and rehearsed speech these fillers are should certainly be largely absent. In spontaneous speech they occur all the time from everybody, my flatmate included though he denies it.

In an interview where the interviewer asks questions that the interviewee was expecting there should also be a relative absence of filler but that, in my view, means the interviewer isn't doing his job. If an unexpected question is asked then normal speech patterns are likely to come into play with all of the umming and ahing that would imply.

I'd trust someone who had to think about his answer and therefore uttered the odd filler far more than I'd trust someone who glibly rattled off a clearly scripted answer.

And I still maintain that to write a letter of complaint because someone used two fillers in one sentence is ridiculous.

quote:

And I still maintain that to write a letter of complaint because someone used two fillers in one sentence is ridiculous.

That I agree with. Even in a prepared speech that is far too pedantic. He should save his ire for those who write "Its" when they mean "It's" (or vice versa).

The whole "lying" accusation reminds me of this post I recently made. I imagine that author would agree with your flatmate. Yet, I think it is all a bunch of balderdash.