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- Greg Malivuk
- http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk
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- "I couldn't help but overhear." - to explain yourself when you enter a conversation that didn't include you before
- "Can I ask you something?" - during a conversation, but what I want to ask is about a different topic than what we were talking about
- "So..." - to introduce a question after a period of silence
- "Well..." - to prepare to give an answer to a question
- "You know..." - to introduce a statement in the same situation
- "Anyway..." - especially to return to an earlier topic
- "By the way,..." - to bring up something that came to my mind, probably about an unrelated topic to our current conversation, but maybe related to an earlier one
- "Incidentally" - similar use, but perhaps more formal
- "um", "uh", sometimes "like" - filler words, used to indicate that I'm still speaking but I need a second to think of the next word
- (Many filler words, especially "like", are seen as signs of informal, uneducated, or unprepared speech. Try to avoid them in formal speaking situations.)
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- The area of linguistics about the connection between speakers and their words is called "pragmatics". It includes these kinds of conversation-function words.
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