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mjohnson mjohnson is online now
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Los Alamos, NM
Posts: 1,765
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Quote:
Originally Posted by masraum View Post
I think "like" replaced "um" as a way to give folks a moment to think of the next thing that they want to say...
Wait until you spend more time around speakers of Mandarin! Enough so that years ago my cousin had to warn/explain this to his family (us all) when his new wife's mainland family was coming to visit. Let's just say that one of their common filler words sounded quite a bit dodgy in English.

(stolen from the webz)

"Nčige" used as a filler word:

...in English, you may say "umm" or another
filler word. In Chinese, the word for this is 那个 (nčige).
(The word 那个 can be pronounced both "nŕge" and
"nčige," but for this usage, "nčige" is normally used.)
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Old 05-10-2025, 12:27 PM
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