What is a hesitation particle?
Sometimes known as filled pauses, they often precede a dispreferred response in a conversation. Instead of refusing or declining an offer right away, one usually throws in a filler word and/or a small pause (could be 0.5 seconds or more).
Hesitation particles are common in everyday speech, but often times speakers are not aware that they are using these words themselves.
Be careful of overusing them, as too many hesitation particles can make one sound less powerful or less credible. This is especially true when one is doing a presentation or public speech to a large audience. In normal conversations, these usually cannot be avoided completely and we have gotten accustomed using them often.
Here's a list of hesitation particles in English:
hmmm
oh
eh
uhm
um
er
ah
mmm
Here's a list of filler words to go along with them:
kinda
sorta
like
y'know
perhaps
so
actually
maybe