Enchufes 5E: Cocina para torpes Enchufe al habla

Fillers and discourse markers

muletillas
ah a ver as pues bueno digo eh emm es decir este esto es luego no? no crees? o sea pues vale

A discourse marker is a word or phrase that we use when were speaking and that doesnt have any meaning. It doesnt change what the sentence youre saying means, it just helps you either continue the flow of the sentence or pause for time. Some examples of discourse markers in English are oh, well, um. And within the class of discourse markers we also have something called fillers. In Spanish these are called muletillas, which means little crutches, and thats exactly what they are: theyre crutches to help you speak. For example, we have the list above. All these words can mean something, and you can see on the list you have in your text what their literal translation is. But when you use them in a sentence as fillers, they dont actually convey any meaning. Theyre pretty much devoid of any kind of content. In Spanish you say ah..., a ver..., pues..., esto... when youre trying to think what to say next or when you need to pause for time. We do this in English too: in English we say things like you know..., like..., um... Its the same idea. In English we do this without thinking; its one of our natural oral speech tendencies. But in Spanish, because its not our natural first language, we have to learn the filler words. But these are really good for you to use as youre speaking. They will make you sound more natural, but they will also help you pause for time that you need to think. Youll notice that each speaker has one or two fillers that are their favorites. I for example use pues and o sea a lot; other speakers will say luego more often. It just depends on their personal preference and which they feel more comfortable using. You should practice using these and using them to fill in the little spaces in your speech. This will keep you from having to switch back into English, so if you dont know a word and need to think about it, instead of saying oh! ... wait! ... hold on! you can say emm ... este... as youre thinking. This will help you sound a lot more fluent when youre speaking in Spanish.