Filler Words in English: What to Say Instead of "Um"

September 10, 2026 · 8 min read · Breakers Academy

You have been told to stop saying "um." It is standard advice in presentation coaching, and for non-native speakers it is usually the wrong instruction — because when you delete the filler, you do not get fluent speech. You get a silence you are afraid of, and then a longer, more visible freeze.

Fluent English is full of fillers. What separates a confident speaker from a hesitant one is not their absence. It is which ones, how long, and in what language they were pronounced.

Filler words are signals, not mistakes

In the best-known linguistic account, "uh" and "um" are not accidents — they are words that announce a delay. Herbert Clark and Jean Fox Tree argued in Cognition (2002) that speakers use "uh" to signal a minor upcoming delay and "um" to signal a major one, and that listeners read those signals: they tell the room "I am still speaking, do not take the turn."

That is a real communicative job. It also explains why removing fillers entirely backfires. A speaker who pauses with no signal at all reads as finished, and someone else starts talking. There is even evidence going the other way: a delay before a difficult word can help listeners process it, because it gives them extra time before the word arrives.

Fillers are also far more frequent than most learners assume. Counts of spontaneous conversation put disfluencies at roughly six per hundred words — meaning the fluent-sounding people around you produce them several times a minute without anyone noticing.

So the goal is not zero. The goal is to replace low-quality fillers with high-quality ones.

What actually makes a filler sound non-native

The sound, not the pause. English "uh" is a short, relaxed, mid-central vowel — the same unstressed sound at the end of sofa. It is quiet and it is brief. Most first-language fillers are neither.

A listener does not consciously analyze this. They just hear something that is not English in the middle of your English sentence, and it draws attention away from what you said. This is the reason filler work belongs to pronunciation rather than vocabulary: the fix is partly a mouth position, not only a phrase.

If nothing else changes, change the vowel. A relaxed English "uh," short and low in volume, is close to invisible.

12 things to say instead of "um"

Every phrase below buys you the same one to three seconds an "um" buys — but it sounds like a choice.

Buying time on purpose (use when you are asked a question)

1. "That's a good question." The workhorse. Common, neutral, and it hands you two full seconds. Do not use it twice in one conversation.
2. "Let me think about that for a second." Say it, then actually pause in silence. The silence is now labeled, so nobody takes your turn.
3. "I want to give you a specific example, so give me a moment." Best in interviews and performance conversations, because it promises value in exchange for the wait.

When you are searching for a word

4. "What's the word…" Native speakers say this constantly. It is not an apology; it is thinking out loud.
5. "How do I put this…" Signals you are choosing between ways of saying something, which sounds careful rather than stuck.
6. "It's something like…" Then describe the word you cannot find. "It's something like a deposit, but you get it back." This almost always makes the listener supply the word for you.

Holding the floor mid-sentence

7. "So…" One syllable, buys half a second, and English speakers use it exactly this way.
8. "The thing is…" Buys longer and frames what follows as the important part.
9. "What I mean is…" Use it to restart a sentence that went wrong without admitting the sentence went wrong.

Softening and restarting

10. "Actually, let me back up." Clean reset. Far better than trailing off and starting again with no marker.
11. "To put it simply…" Converts a sentence you cannot finish elegantly into a shorter one you can.
12. "Sorry — one second." Complete permission to stop talking. Learners almost never reach for it, and it works.

Silence is the most underrated replacement

A one-to-two-second silent pause is the strongest option on this page, and the hardest for adult learners to use.

It is hard because silence feels, from the inside, enormously longer than it sounds from the outside. Two seconds of quiet while you think reads to a listener as consideration. The same two seconds filled with "eeeeh" reads as struggle. Identical duration, opposite impression.

The practical trick is to pair the two: use one English phrase to label the pause ("Let me think for a second"), then go completely silent. Labeled silence is safe silence — nobody interrupts a pause that was announced.

Why "like" and "you know" are riskier than "um"

"Like" and "you know" are legitimate English discourse markers, but both carry a register you may not want in a professional setting. In US English, frequent "like" reads as young and casual; frequent "you know" reads as informal and, in a meeting, slightly as though you are seeking agreement you have not earned yet.

That is not a reason to ban them — in a relaxed conversation with neighbors they are completely natural, and a Saturday coffee where you never say "like" sounds stiffer than one where you do. It is a reason to be aware of the setting. In a client call or a performance review, "um" costs you less than three "like"s in one sentence.

How to change the habit in two weeks

Filler words are motor habits, so awareness alone does nothing. You need to hear yourself.

1. Record 60 seconds. Talk about your day, out loud, into your phone. Do not prepare.
2. Count and classify. Write down every filler and mark it: English, first-language, or silence. Most people are shocked by the first-language column, not the total.
3. Pick one replacement. Exactly one phrase from the list above. Not five. One.
4. Rehearse it out of context. Say your chosen phrase twenty times while driving or making coffee, so it is available under pressure. This is the step everyone skips and the one that makes it work.
5. Use it in one low-stakes conversation per day. A cashier, a colleague, a neighbor. Never debut a new phrase in the meeting that matters.
6. Re-record on day 7 and day 14. The count usually drops slowly; the language of the fillers changes fast. That second change is the one listeners notice.

The realistic outcome after two weeks is not a filler-free speaker. It is a speaker whose pauses now happen in English.

Where this gets practiced

Filler habits only appear under real time pressure, which is why they are almost impossible to fix through reading or grammar study — the habit does not activate when you are calm and alone. Our scenario-based method is built around that: sessions rehearse actual situations at the speed the real ones run, so the pause happens live and can be corrected in the moment it occurs. For everyday conversations — appointments, neighbors, school pickup, small talk that goes on longer than expected — that work sits inside Real-Life English.

The one thing to take away

You are not trying to sound like someone who never hesitates. No such speaker exists. You are trying to make your hesitation happen in English — short, quiet, and labeled — so the listener hears a person thinking instead of a person struggling.