To err is human. And to forgive is divine. Don’t worry, you haven’t landed on the wrong page! I’m not going to digress with self-help therapy spiel or a treatise on the inevitability of human fallibility. In fact, I’m going to talk about ‘er’. It’s an innocuous sound, but despite its innocent appearance, it’s certainly not one that’s universally liked. In fact, public speaking experts dedicate significant energy to urging us to eliminate our ‘ums’ and ‘ers’, on the basis that these so called ‘fillers’ detract from the content of our message. My mission is to liberate this maligned utterance from the ‘naughty corner’ and give it the recognition that it deserves rather than punishment in the stocks. Let us celebrate ‘er’ rather than condemn it!
What’s it for?
Have you ever asked yourself what ‘er’ is for? ‘Er’ is what we linguists call a hesitation phenomenon or a filler. It belongs to a group which might also include ‘um’, ‘so’, ‘well’, like’ and ‘you know’. Fillers fill pauses. But why? What’s wrong with the Sound of Silence? It was good enough for Simon and Garfunkel. Granted, silence can be golden. Silence has its own merits and that’s another story, but a silent pause can be taken as a sign for others to start speaking – a sign that you’ve finished or even that you’ve run out of ideas. A filled pause, however, can signal that you’re not finished yet. It suggests that your speech is catching up with thoughts or that you’re in the process of selecting exactly the right word to convey your message. An ’um’ or an ‘er’ is of benefit to the audience too – it alerts them to the important word that’s on its way. Research shows that you’re much more likely to remember a word that comes after a hesitation sound!
Sounds may vary
Obviously, hesitation sounds vary from language to language because they form the ‘starting block’ of their specific sound systems. They’re the most commonly occurring sounds, the sound you’re most likely to need and the one you want close at hand. ‘Er’ or /ə/ might seem small and insignificant, but we’d be completely lost without it. In phonetics, unlike any other sound, ‘er’ has its own name: it’s called ‘schwa’. Around 50% of the vowel noises you make are schwa, making it the most commonly occurring vowel sound in English words. And would it surprise you to learn that schwa can be represented by each of the vowel letters?
As English as cricket
So next time you denounce an ‘er’, remind yourself of its superior status as a sound within words and between them. To err is not only human, it’s also an authentic and necessary feature of our language and its rhythm. English without ‘er’ would be unrecognisable. In fact, ‘er’ is as quintessentially English as tea and scones, warm beer or cricket.