French Fillers

Fillers, as in, you know, ah, what people say when, uh, they don't really know where, like, they want to go with what they want to say, you know? Or, like, they need, well, more time to gather their thoughts?

Of course the French have their own fillers and they drive me CRAZY sometimes.

Hana has gotten into saying "eh bah" quite a bit, quite often. So if I ask her, "what did you learn in Science today?", she would start with, "Eh bah, we learned, bah, stuff like bones and the, eh bah, the reproductive systems" (yes, as a side, she is at that stage of learning already. Sigh)

She now seems not to be able to speak in French without the aid of "eh bahs". Whenever I tell her, "pls repeat without the eh bahs", her eyes start rolling and I know any day now she will start to ignore me when I say that. Thankfully she doesn't carry this into English. She doesn't actually use any fillers in English - maybe because much of the English she hears comes from scripted TV shows?

That said, Hana does not YET use another French filler that I personally find annoying, if only because I think I would never say it because it doesn't sound right coming from me, a foreigner. And that is "quoi" - that people add at the end of an affirmative or declarative sentence. For example, "c'est completement dingue, qoui" - "it's totally crazy or what" (I guess). Or "Je suis rentre vers 13 heures, quoi" - "I got home around 1pm, right?" - People add "quoi" at the end of sentences so often and this confused me first. I kinda felt like they were challenging me to dispute them, "quoi" being "what", as in "what, do you not believe what I'm saying?" or other similarly hostile end to a sentence.

I'll know I am speaking French like a native when I feel comfortable using these fillers myself!