Chinese don't utter "um", when they are lost for words, they say "nage". "Nage" means "that" and is pronounced nay-gur. I work in a busy Chinese office and the sound of nage sings in the air. Almost every conversation starts with nage this or nage that (I mean nage). Someone rushes over to a co-worker with important business, leans over the work cubicle and it's take that (I mean nage).

If you have just arrived in China, start saying nage now. You can sound like a local with a few words. I know about 300 Chinese words, but by strategically inserting nage I can very sneakily double my vocabulary. It impresses my visiting friends.

I can tell a taxi driver the place I want to go and pepper the sentence with nage, and my mates say: "Wow, how about that! You can really speak Chinese."

I normally pad out the sentence with a preamble so the taxi driver can tune into my poor pronunciation.

"I can speak Chinese a little, but I don't speak well " But if I insert nage it becomes twice as long. "Nage, nage, wo hui shuo .. nage, nage ... (Um, um, I can speak, um, um) nage, nage ... yidian ... (um, um, a little) nage ... putonghua ... nage (um Chinese um).

My friends think I'm the real deal, unlike the taxi driver who rolls his eyes and sees through my scam.

I have an American friend who has taken nage to a new level. He speaks good Chinese, and like everybody else, starts a sentence with nage. But when he uses it like I use "um" he sounds like a horse. Naaaayyyyyyyyyy ge.

We all know Chinese is a tough language and scientists have recently discovered why. Putonghua actually tricks the brain. Researchers have found the brain first recognizes Chinese words as music and sends the sound to its right side, or the creative part, for processing. Within a nanosecond, the brain realizes the sound is a language and moves it to the left side for better analysis.

Therefore, it is a scientific fact that the Chinese language actually makes the brain say um (I mean nage).

Um is actually a word. "Exclamation: Expressing hesitation in speech", says the Oxford American and was first recorded in English about 400 years ago. A lot of folks have been um-ing along nicely ever since.

My former editor is a very smart fellow, a witty writer and is the biggest um man on this side of Timbuktu. In his three-minute, rev-up-the-troops speeches, he usually says um at least 20 times. "Um ... I just want to say ... um ... the level of commitment and dedication ... um ... I have seen over the past week .. um .. has been nothing short of sensational ... um, um, um."

A mate of mine bet me a coffee that my old boss would hit 32 ums during a farewell speech for a popular colleague. He was out by four. Our editor um-ed an incredible 36 times.

When I left for China, the editor wished me well and I clearly remember his farewell. "Um, that's that." So what my boss really meant to say was nage, nage, nage.

(China Daily 01/31/2007 page20)