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Conversation fillers and back-channeling in Mandarin

I Have a Question
#1

I was re-watching this video about learning Japanese as I find a lot of the concepts work for studying Mandarin as well and I realized that I wasn’t totally sure on the common vocabulary used for mandarin conversation fillers and back channeling
(Please see youtube link for further info)

For conversation fillers I know you can say "那个。。“but I don’t really know anything else.

@GwilymJames @Fiona I searched the CPod lessons for this topic but wasn’t able to find anything, did I miss something? If there is no lessons on this content perhaps this can be a topic for a future lesson?

Anyone who may have suggestions or can help to answer my questions please reply, it would be greatly appreciated :slight_smile:

#2

あの…

C’mon @Matt_T I know you already know these!

所以⋯這個⋯哪個⋯雖哪⋯而且
我覺得⋯真的⋯真的嗎⋯對⋯沒錯⋯是啊⋯是⋯是的⋯等等 the list goes on, just think of how you fill the conversation in English and go from there… Works the same in most languages I think. I suggest paying a bit more attention to how people speak outside of cpod dialogues. The problem with these dialogues is that they are scripted therefore they usually omit excessive use of filler words unless of course that is the point of the lesson. If you listen to people casually talking you should be able to pick up on these things…
對不對？那個⋯這個⋯⋯加油！

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#3

Thanks for the reply @Nabeshima120 !!! Now that you list some I recognize them, but there were some new ones that you mentioned I didn’t know. :slight_smile:

The problem is that I rarely use these when speaking so it’s something I need to work on.

#4

Hey np, I tend to use them too much lol… One time I was having a language exchange with someone on skype and I kept saying 我覺得⋯我覺得⋯ Then this girl just snapped on me and was like 你覺得什麼！ lol , I was just like 算了算了haha

Another thing is when native speakers say 比如說⋯ I noticed they often use this as a filler to buy time to think of examples. Happens in English as well… For example… You get the point, lol…
You probably already seen this but I’ll post for whoever see this that hasn’t… Similar kinda thing…

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#5

Don’t most people work to remove filler words from their speech?

#6

You obviously aren’t there yet.

#7

Hi guys!

I think it would be a great topic to do for a Qing Wen! We could start with some newbie ones and move up to more advanced ones!

We will add that to our next recording session :slight_smile:

Fi