The other day I was talking with someone who said, "You know what? I don't really like..."

At the time, I thought that phrase "you know what?" really means nothing. We may have talked about it here before, but what is it called?

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
... what is it called?

Irritating.

It's verbal filler. Like "er" or "um" or "well" or "you know" or "right then," or "so,". It's something people say while the words for what they actually want to express are still forming in their heads.
It only becomes irritating (and some of them irritate me too) when you are talking to someone whose speech patterns and fillers don't match your own.

This is why people of my generation (me included) find themselves getting annoyed at "like" and "Know what I mean". It's not that we use less filler, just that we use different filler.

They are also very hard speech habits to break as they become more or less automatic responses.

We must be of somewhat similar ages, Bob, since my dislikes are similar. In response to "You know what," my standard reply is, "Yes, but I don't know why."

quote:

Originally posted by Geoff:
We must be of somewhat similar ages, Bob, since my dislikes are similar. In response to "You know what," my standard reply is, "Yes, but I don't know why."

When asked by a clerk, "Can I help you," I don my ever-so-pedantic Strunkian peevologist persona and reply, "I don't know if you can, but you may."

quote:

Originally posted by Geoff:

quote:

Originally posted by Geoff:
We must be of somewhat similar ages, Bob, since my dislikes are similar. In response to "You know what," my standard reply is, "Yes, but I don't know why."

When asked by a clerk, "Can I help you," I don my ever-so-pedantic Strunkian peevologist persona and reply, "I don't know if you can, but you may."

quote:

"You know what?

I think this one has been around for awhile. I remember my Dad saying, "No, I've never met him."

Is it the same (a verbal filler) when people ask "How come?" instead of "why?" Someone said that to me the other day, and I wondered how that phrase ever developed.

Is it the same (a verbal filler) when people ask "How come?" instead of "why?" Someone said that to me the other day, and I wondered how that phrase ever developed.

I wouldn't say that "how come" for "why" is a verbal filler. It's just an alternate way of saying "why". What's wrong with it? I notice it must be an old phrase because it uses the subjunctive.

"wherefore" is surely old. There's the AV biblical, "...it came to pass..." and that's from 1610.

What's wrong with it? Well, nothing, I suppose. However, to me it says nothing, just as "er" or "ah" or "You know what?" One just knows what it means from context. It would be as though I started something new here, like, "baby likes sox." Do you know what that means? Not now, but if I were to use it all the time here, using the same context, you'd figure it out.

My son, for example, used a slang the other day that meant "Wow, that's nice!" I completely misinterpreted what he was saying because I'd not been familiar with it, as you aren't familiar with my "baby likes sox!" Yet, his friends knew what it meant because they'd heard it before.

"How come ...?" could introduce a rhetorical question, but that's not the same thing as being a verbal filler. "Why ...?" can be used in the same way.

A verbal filler is used in conversation to cover up the gap when the speaker is thinking what to say. Often it's like a nervous tic, and appears in almost every other sentence.

One of my least-favourite is used a lot by politicians here: "as I was saying". Or, in a variant much used by footballers like David Beckham, "like I was saying".

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:


A verbal filler is used in conversation to cover up the gap when the speaker is thinking what to say.

That's why I wouldn't call "You know what?" verbal filler. I think it is used more to emphasize what's to follow. For example, someone will say "You know what? I don't care." It's a way of saying "I'm going to give you my opinion and you better listen!" Think of "You know what?" as a shortened form of "Do You know what I think about that?" I guess a good answer would be, "No, and I don't care." As my kids used to say, "So what? Who cares?"

Tinman, I, too, was skeptical about "you know what" being a verbal filler. I had thought we'd talked here about another word for that phrase, but I couldn't think of it.

I think that the use might well depend on the individual using it. In many cases it's no more than verbal filler as mentioned by Bob. Sometimes, as tinman suggests, people use it in an attempt to add emphasis. In either case, it adds no extra meaning to the words that follow.

"You know what" sounds to me like an alternative for "I've been thinking" where the person wants to couch what they're saying or draw your attention to their thougt.