文本来源：佛山英语培训 首选爱德华国际英语   

Our word-fumbles offer subtle clues about our personalities and intentions.

语塞会以一种微妙的方式表现出我们的性格和想法。

Um, guys. I have some information to share with you, and fair warning, it's, uh, going to make you scrutinize your speech for several days.

嗯，朋友们，我要和你们分享一些信息，先要告诉你们的是，它会，嗯，让你花上好几天仔细翻看曾经说过的话。

You know when you're searching for a word, or trying to say something more nicely than you actually mean it, or trying to make up your mind after you've already started speaking? Whether you reach for an "um" or an "uh" in those situations might depend on whether you're male or female.

当你在脑子里搜索该用哪个词的时候，或者当你尝试将自己的原意表达得更得体时，又或者在你已经开始说话后才决定怎么说时，你在用语中会选择um还是uh可能取决于你的性别。

Our verbal pauses actually speak volumes: "Like," as eighth-grade English teachers will tell you, makes the speaker sound young or ditzy; "sort of" smacks of uncertainty. But according to the linguist Mark Liberman, who works at the University of Pennsylvania and blogs at Language Log, even a difference as subtle as the one between "um" and "uh" provides clues about the speaker's gender, language skills, and even life experience.

我们的言语停顿实际上有很深的含义。你的八级英语老师会告诉你，Like（像是，比如说）让说话人显得没有经验或者傻乎乎的；sort of（有点儿）则带有不确定性。但是根据在宾夕法尼亚大学和Language Log博客工作的语言学家马克•李伯曼所说，即便是非常细微的差别，比如um和uh，也会暗示说话者的性别、语言能力，甚至人生阅历。

For his analyses, Liberman has been parsing 14,000 transcribed phone conversations, which together comprise more than 26 millions words and involve about 12,000 speakers from all over the U.S.

为了研究这一理论，李伯曼转写了来自美国各地约1万2千人之间的1万4千通电话谈话，并对其中涵盖的2千6百万个单词进行了分析。

Back in 2005, he found that usage of "uh" increases with age, but at every age, men say it more than women do. Meanwhile, usage of "um" decreases with age, but female speakers said it more than male ones at each stage in life:

早在2005年，李伯曼就已经提出，uh的使用量会随着年龄的增长而增加，但是在每一年龄段，男性说得比女性多。另一方面，um的使用量则会随着年龄的增长而减少，但是在每一年龄段，女性说得要比男性多。

Overall, he found that women say "um" 22 percent more than men do, but men say "uh" more than twice as often as women do. A 2011 study by Eric Acton yielded similar results.

总的来说，他发现女性对um的使用量要比男性多22%，而男性对uh的使用量则是女性的两倍多。之后，2011年一项由埃里克•阿克顿主导的研究也得出了类似的结论。

When the two genders are speaking to each other, they try to meet in the middle: "Males use uh about 14 percent less often when talking with a female rather than a male, and females use uh about 20 percent more often when talking with a male rather than a female," Liberman writes. (There's not nearly as much accommodation with "um.")

当和异性交谈时，人们会尽量找一个折中的方式。李伯曼写到：“在和女性交谈时，男性会比和同性交谈时少用约14%‘uh’；而在和男性交谈时，女性则会比和同性交谈时多用约20%‘uh’。”（对于um的使用，则没有上述这么多的调整。）

What Liberman found, essentially, was that young men speak like old women: "The rate of 'um' usage for the younger men is almost the same as the rate of 'um' usage for the older women."

从本质上来看，李伯曼的理论就是说年轻的男性说话像年长的女性：“年轻男性对um的使用率和年长女性对um的使用率几乎是一样的。”

It's hard to determine what, exactly, this says about how the two genders think about themselves—or their words. One 2001 paper found that men use all kinds of "language fillers" more frequently than women do. But a study published in June found that while men and women say either "um" or "uh" roughly equal amounts, women say "you know," "like," and "I mean" more often. That study suggested that people who use these types of "discourse markers" are more empathetic and conscientious—two traits women are often thought to be socialized to exhibit.

其实很难说这一理论在男性和女性是怎么看待自己和自己所说的话这个问题上说明了什么。2001年的一份研究报告指出，男性比女性更频繁地使用“语言填充词”。但是六月份公布的一项研究则发现，男性和女性在um和uh的使用上是差不多的，但女性会更常说“你知道的”、“像是”和“我的意思是”之类的话。这项研究暗示使用这些“话语标记”的人一般更善解人意，也更认真细心——而这两个特质通常都会在女性身上展示出来。

Liberman also posits that "um" and "uh" portray language fluency and intelligence differently. "People tend to use UM when they're trying to decide what to say, and UH when they're trying to decide how to say it," he told me in an email. "As people get older, they have less trouble deciding what to say (because they know more stuff), and more trouble deciding how to say it (because they know more words and fixed phrases, and so have a harder time making a choice). As a result, older people use fewer UMs and more UHs."

李伯曼还假设，从um和uh的使用可以看出说话人语言流利度和智商的差别。他在邮件中告诉我：“人们会在思考说什么的时候用‘um’，在思考怎么说的时候用uh。另外，随着年龄的增长，说什么已经不成问题（因为他们了解更多的事物），而怎么说则比较让人头疼（因为他们掌握了更多的单词和固定短语，所以选择用哪个是个问题）。最后，年龄更大的人就会更少用um，更常用uh。”

Thus, one theory is that perhaps, "At any given (adult) age, men are more linguistically experienced than women, and so use UM and UH as if they were older," he says. "OR MAYBE: Women are more communicatively circumspect than men, and therefore more likely to pause before deciding what to say; but women are more linguistically fluent than men, and therefore less likely to pause while deciding what words to use."

因此，他给出的解释是：“可能在任何既定年龄，男性都要比女性具备更高的语言能力，所以当使用um和uh时男性的年龄就会显得更大。还有一种可能是，女性在用语上比男性更慎重，所以在决定说什么之前就更有可能停顿。同时另一方面，女性在语言表达上比男性更流利，所以在决定怎么说的时候就不太可能停顿。”

A 2000 study found that people use "um" to signal long pauses and "uh" to signal short ones, so perhaps women just intend to hint at a major delay. Women also use "assenting murmurs" more frequently in conversation—uh-huhs and mm-hmms—and they laugh 60 percent more than men do. Maybe the "ums," with their long mmm, their careful consideration, and their prudence, are simply an extension of women's overall linguistic cordiality. In an analysis of the most-commonly used words and sounds in male and female conversations, Liberman found that the most distinctive one for women was "[laughter]" and the one for men was "uh." The words "gosh" and "goodness" made an appearance on the female list, while "shit" popped up on the male one.

2000年的一项研究发现，人们需要长时停顿时使用um，需要短时停顿时使用uh，所以女性可能只是想暗示别人自己在做一次长时停顿。在聊天时女性也更常使用一些“表示赞同的语气词”，比如uh-huh, mm-hmm，而且笑的频率也要比男性多60%。可能um还有拖音更长的mmm，以及女性对措辞的深思和谨慎等都只是她们因热爱语言而产生的一些表现而已。对女性和男性谈话中最常用的词语、声音进行分析后，李伯曼发现女性的特点是常常笑，而男性则常说uh。女性也常常说gosh和goodness（天哪），而男性则常说shit（妈的）。

This, Liberman notes, meshes with a 2013 study that analyzed women's and men's Facebook posts and found that men are most distinguished by their use of "fuck," "wishes," and "xbox," while women stood out for words like "shopping," "excited," and "<3."

李伯曼指出，这一发现和2013的一项研究结果是一致的。该项研究对女性和男性在脸书上发布的帖子做了分析，发现男性最突出的特点是使用fuck（妈的），wishes（愿望）和xbox（游戏）这些词语，而女性的特点则是常提到shopping（购物），excited（激动）和<3（爱）这些词。

Facebook isn't a one-to-one representation of real speech, of course, but it's telling that even when they're being their best selves, men seem to be a lot less concerned with appearing happy, congenial, or "blessed."

虽然脸书并不是日常生活中一对一的对话，但从该研究结果还是能看出，即便是最真实的自己，男性也并不太显露出自己看起来是否开心、合群或者幸福。

Women also tend to be linguistic pioneers, Liberman says, ushering in massive societal word-choice shifts long before the men start to catch on. So it could be that "um" is overtaking "uh" among everyone, and women just happen to be leading the way.

李伯曼还指出，女性也倾向于做语言的先锋，她们常先于男性使用大量社会用语的变体。所以每个人都会更多地用um而不是uh也是有可能的，而女性们则刚好在起带头作用。

It's a little shocking how reminiscent some of these verbal quirks are of Sheryl Sandberg's admonishments to female leaders that they should smile more and act generally more communal than their male counterparts.

令人意外的是，这些“言语怪癖”不禁让我们想起雪莉•桑德伯格对女性领导人的告诫，她认为她们应该经常微笑，而且要比她们的男同事表现得更有集体观念。

There's probably no overcoming these little rhetorical flags for the long-term. (Going back to the eighth-grade teacher, remember how her threats to deduct points for every "like" in a class presentation only made you say it more?)

我们很有可能无法长期使自己不去使用这些修饰性的词语。（回到文章开头提到的八级英语老师，虽然她规定在课堂发言中每使用一次“就像是”都要扣分，但结果你只会用得更多，还记得吗？）

Still, I think it might be fun to try to speak like a man for a day. By which I mean, "Uh, I wish I could go play my fucking xbox."

我还是觉得如果有一天试着像男人一样说话应该也挺有意思的。比如说：“啊，我希望我可以去玩TMD游戏。”

| 打印本页 | 关闭窗口 | 订阅“爱德华国际英语”