Is um a word

Answer 1

um is the americanized form of the British vocalized pause "erm" or "em". It is a variant of "uh" ("er" in British English). It is unknown where these filler words came from, because prior to the 20th Century, they have never been recorded in writing or on audio media.

Virtually every language on the planet has vocalized pauses.

The French use "euh", the Germans say "äh" (pronounced eh or er), Japanese use "ā", "anō", or "ēto", and Spanish speakers say "ehhh" (also used in Hebrew), "como" (normally meaning 'like'), and "este" (normally meaning 'this') in Spanish. Besides "er" and "uh", the Portuguese use "hã or é". In Mandarin "nèi ge" and "zhè ge" ('that' and 'this') are used. In Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian, speakers vocalize an "ovaj". Arabic speakers say "يعني", the pronunciation of which is close to "yaa'ni", [jæʕni] or [jaʕni], (literally, "he means", there being no grammatically gender-neutral third person) and in Turkish, they say "şey" in addition to "yani" (without the [ʕ] found in Arabic).