Hi! Folks,

I am a newbie out here and this is my first post. Anyway down to brasstacks.

Yesterday a friend asked me if any word in English describes the usage of a particular word repeatedly.

For e.g. a Professor of mine had this habit of using the word "right?" after every sentence he spoke in class. ("The Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns would apply to this situation. Right? and so on)

Been wracking my mind on what could be the word to describe such usage.

For those reader who are familiar with Hindi, I am looking for the equivalent of the word "Takia Kalam"

Looking forward to hear from you folks.

Ciao
Gautam

Hello, from stranger to stranger. In my language they call the often irritating thing a "stopword".(stopwoordje)
I guess it can be regarded as a nervous phenomenen (tic). Involuntary interruptions of speech.
I know someone who uses about three times "You know?" before he gets to the end of the sentence. Tedious.

I'm curious to learn the English word for it too.

hmm. to start with, stopwords are something entirely else in (English) computerese. hmm.

-joe (um, could be fillers , you know?) friday

welcome, Gautam.

how about "annoying"?


and Bran, you're a Pooh-bah, you're no Stranger. :¬ )

Hey Gautam

Welcome to the board. I'm an infrequent dropper in, but I'm sure the regulars will give you a rousing reception.

If I'm not mistaken takia kalam (a phrase new to me) is probably more Urdu/Persian than Sanskrit. Am I right in assuming it translates as "pillow pen" or "pillow talk"?

The closest that English has, to my knowledge, for this is something like "catchphrase", though the usage is quite different.

I have also heard writers describe such behaviour as a form of 'verbal tic', but again, that's a far more general description than the specific one you seek.

Wish I could have been more helpful.

cheer

the sunshine warrior

PS. Ha! It's taken me just over 8 years to get to 1000 posts!

see link to 'filler' above, as my post was superseded by others while I was editing.

I'd go with discourse marker (link). Other kinds of disfluencies (link) are fillers (link) and hedges (link)

more on fillers

-joe (dueling disfluencies) friday

Perhaps signature phrase, catchphrase, or personal cliché.

Zigackly. In context, with my limited Hindi, that's what I thought too. Haven't heard the phrase 'personal cliché' before though.

Guat welcome
verbigeration might work

http://onelook.com/?w=*&loc=revfp2&clue=word+repetition

Guess it depends on the frequency with which the word is used I think, whether is could be a personal cliché or a verbal tic.

I have a cousin who uses "hoe heet et" (what's it) really at such high frequency during converstions that had to ask him if he could lower it. He couldn't. That's definitely a verbal tic.
(lots of ticcies around )

Etaoin:
Now that's a fine compliment.....

heh.

Hindi तकियाकलाम (takiyākalām) is from takiyā 'pillow, support' + kalām 'speech, talk' (< kalam 'reed, pen'); so, support words. The other translation pillow talk already has a different meaning in English (link). Personal cliché was my nonce phrase. Been a while, shanks. Nice of you to drop by.

Gautam, could you maybe say if the repetitive use of this word is irritating his students. If so, it's a case of hard-core tic.
Only heavy therapy can possibly change this habit.

>heavy therapy

see, verbigeration

-joe (repeating myself, again) friday

Yup, who can forget Rock Hudson and Doris Day?

It's good to drop by from time to time. Glad to be remembered.

Sorry, I get lost in lists. I'll tell my cousin. Where there a word there is a way. Verbigeration then.

tic

I like verbal tic or perhaps logorrheic tic.

well, I didn't pick 'em.

I know. I can live with it. Oh, and thank you of course for considering me not a stranger.

That "onelook" site is a cool tool! One I found that I like: skimble-scamble :0)

Funny that skimble, seperately, gives no result on OneLook.
Scamble does.

In Québec the vast majority of the population says "là" at the end of every second or third spoken sentence.

Là means "there". Unless you're telling somebody a place to put something, there is absolutely no reason why the word would be used at all; yet its use is pervasive.

Can a whole society have a verbal tic?

Dunno, eh? ;-)

HA!! Took me a second to get that.

Maybe eh is just Anglish for la?

Ooo no. Eh means a LOT of different things. Whole essays have been written about our lovely little eh.

(or whatever we finally decide to call it...)

Yes of course they can, eh?

Canadians, New Zealanders and people from north Queensland (an Australian state) all append the word 'eh' (or 'ay' if you like - rhymes with 'day') to the end of most sentences. Most Australians don't do this, however, many do end sentences with a rising inflection similar to a question. Both phenomena seem to be saying "you do agree with what I'm saying, don't you?" and perhpas indicate some degree of cultural cringe.

I can't think of a word to desribe the phenomenon this thread is about - I was going to offer "annoying" a few minutes after the original post but decided against it (great minds think alike etaoin?). However, the word for someone's own personal eccentric way of speaking would be an 'ideolect.'

eh is certainly a Canuckism but more common in Central/East than out here. I have wondered if it arose from the Quebecois hein, "Tu vas en ville, hein?" (there is an accent but I can't find it on this computer and with my techno-klutz tendencies it would take all night to find it)
It is always irritating to read a Canadian character's dialogue written by someone from another country as the eh's are in the wrong places. The trick is to put it where you would use the US huh, "New hummer, huh?"

ideolect

As a linguistic term, ideolect has a neutral connotation.

In the part of the US I am from, "huh" is mostly used as a marker of confusion or not understanding: "Huh?", or, in an interestingly ironic twist, to indicate understanding, maybe mixed with a little "if you say so" skepticism, generally after an explanation: "Huh."

Around here, most people would actually use the /ay/ sound on your example: "New Hummer, aay?", but it is not the same phoneme as the Canadian. It is a bit harder and longer. I would venture to say that it probably dripped south from Canada, being as close as we are. It is sometimes accompanied by an elbow nudge (or movement).

I always thought of the Canadian /ay/ as used in looking for confirmation or rolling a question to another person, as in "I don't, eh?", meaning "I don't know, do you?". My mother was Canadian (making me 1/2, ha ha), but she didn't use "eh" much at all. She probably dropped before I was born, having moved here when she got married, but she was also a teacher, and perhaps scrubbed it from her speech for that reason. :0)

This thread led me to a bit of googling, which, in turn, informed me that there's a project afoot to update the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (1967). The project is being lead by an Austrian academic (link)

Maybe "right" would have been a better US translation, at least in some states. Apparently if I was writing US''n dialogue i would get that wrong too.
English speaking Canadians do tend to be more active in listening; nodding, murmuring or saying confirmations (this is not considered interrupting) and the speaker's eh invites that. It is also used to turn a statement into a question rather than changing the word order or merely added onto the end of a question or sentence for emphasis. Or it may merely be a verbal tic, more common in the east as I said.
"I don't know, eh?" would usually mean "Really, I don't know." This is a good example of foreign written dialogue.
What part of the true north is your Mom from?

My mom was a native Torontonian. My grandmother lived there on her own, and came down to visit, as we would go up to visit. I have very fond memories of Toronto, and a couple of years ago took my son up in the CN tower, which he was thrilled with. We used to hit Canada once a year or so, if only Niagara Falls, but now you are supposed to have passports and such, and it's more hassle. Bummer!

I see what you mean about the eh inviting an "I'm listening/understanding what you mean" response. I do know that it's uncomfortable when you're talking with somebody and you get no reponse. You feel the need to say "do you know what I mean" when getting no reactions.

Did I say it didn't? Sorry if I gave the impression that it was somehow pejorative. It is just the individual version of 'dialect.'

I have an American friend from Ohio via California who uses "huh" in both ways, sometimes like "eh?" on the end of a sentence, as in "It's a nice day, huh?" and sometimes as a marker indicating that he is following what you're saying, where he will nod his head and say "huh" or less frequently "uh-huh." Whether this reflects an Ohian or Californian dialect or is just Phil's ideolect I have no idea.

As far as I am aware, the Canadian eh has no relationship to Fonzie's ideolect.

Hmm. How would you spell the Fonz' 'eh'? It's a lot longer than just 'eh.' But 'eeeehhhh' sounds too much like a girl's scream. Perhaps 'aaaayyyy'?