Lessons

While looking for the Picasso show and after i had visited my old school, i overheard some young college girls talking to eachother. Every third word they used was the word like, as in: so, like, i was, like, talking with these guys, and like, they, like, told me about this, like, bar around here, and like, we should, you know, like, go, right?

I am neither a linguist nor a communication expert.

There are a couple categories of words i am interested in: those used multiple times throughout a sentence and those used at a distinct point in the sentence (such as beginnng/end), and in both cases there is little to no structural reason for their use. In the first category is the word like and the phrase you know. In the second category are the words well (such as during interviews, the interviewee will often begin an answer with "Well...") and right, and the phrase you know (yes this one exists in both categories). Aside from words/phrases, there are also sounds that are often used in the same context, such as uhm and hrm.

Now it would be easy to launch into a discussion about the reason these words are used in such an apparently mindless fashion, but since i was walking through Rome, listening to English speakers, having just come from talking with an Italian/French instructor, i wondered: are there similar words/phrases in other languages?