Re: CHAT: ...y'know

On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Pablo Flores escribi=F3:
> Raymond A. Brown <raybrown@...> wrote:
>=20
> > Of course, the really determined space fillers will the resort to
> > _beginning_ sentences with "Basically......."   I haven't worked out =
a
> > response to this yet.
> >=20
>=20
> Reminds me of a filler that TV journalists use all the time
> here: "De alguna manera..." ("In a certain way..."). It doesn't
> really mean anything but they begin every other sentence with it.
> And they also precede some noun phrases with "esto que es..."
> ("this which is..."), more or less consistently, =E0 la French=20
> question ("qu'est que c'est").
>=20
>=20
> --Pablo Flores
Speaking of "esto que es"/"qu'est que c'est", I've noticed an annoying tr=
end in
American speech: when explaining something, people will say "what it is i=
s...."
In addition there are even longer variations, such as "the thing of it is=
 is
...," which isn't even correct grammar. Perhaps someone else could give b=
etter
examples.

--
Eric Christopherson
raccoon@elknet.net      rakkoon78@hotmail.com