Nobody speaks in finished sentences. Israelis stall, back up, reach for a word that will not come and hold their turn while they look for it — and the machinery for doing that is language-specific, learnable, and almost entirely absent from textbooks. This page is the inventory.
One thing first. Hesitation cannot be wrong. There is no correct amount of it and no error in producing an אה. The only genuine mistake on this page is a grammatical one, and it lives in the floor-keepers at the end.
The two sounds: אה and אמ
Written אה and אמ, and this is one place where the two languages do not share a sound. English hesitates on a schwa — uh, um — and Hebrew hesitates on a plain, front e. Substituting the English vowel is one of the more audible things a learner does, and it happens in exactly the moments when nobody is monitoring their accent.
אה... כן, אני חושבת שראיתי אותו שם.
e... ken, aní khoshévet shera'íti otó sham
Uh... yes, I think I saw him there. (f. speaker)
אמ... תן לי רגע לחשוב על זה.
em... ten li réga lakhshóv al ze
Um... give me a second to think about it. (to a man)
זה, the word for the word you have lost
זה is a demonstrative — "this" — and in speech it doubles as an all-purpose placeholder for any noun you cannot retrieve. It goes where the noun would have gone, definite article and all, and the listener waits. Usually the real word arrives a beat later and you simply say it.
תביא לי את ה... זה, הפותחן.
taví li et ha... ze, hapotkhán
Pass me the... thingy, the bottle opener. (to a man)
ראיתי את הזה, איך קוראים לו, השכן מהקומה השנייה.
ra'íti et hazé, eikh kor'ím lo, hashakhén mehakomá hashniyá
I saw the... what's his name, the neighbour from the second floor.
There is a verb version of the same trick. עשה "do, make" stands in for whatever specific verb you have mislaid, and הדבר הזה covers the whole errand.
אני צריך לעשות את הדבר הזה עם הביטוח, לחדש אותו.
aní tsaríkh la'asót et hadavár hazé im habitúakh, lekhadésh otó
I need to do the... thing with the insurance, renew it. (m. speaker)
Asking out loud for the word
Hebrew has a small set of fixed phrases for the moment you give up on retrieving a word and ask for help — or comment on your own choice of one.
| Phrase | Reads | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| איך אומרים…? | eikh omrím | how do you say…? — asks for a word |
| איך קוראים לזה? | eikh kor'ím lazé | what's it called? — asks for a name |
| מה שנקרא | ma shenikrá | what you'd call, as they say — flags a set phrase |
| סוג של | sug shel | a sort of — hedges the noun that follows |
| כזה | kazé | …ish, or so — hedges the quantity before it |
איך אומרים את זה יותר יפה? יש מילה, שכחתי אותה.
eikh omrím et ze yotér yafé? yesh milá, shakhákhti otá
How do you say this more nicely? There's a word for it and I've forgotten it.
הוא היה, מה שנקרא, בין עבודות.
hu hayá, ma shenikrá, bein avodót
He was, as they say, between jobs.
עמדנו שם, לא יודע, חצי שעה כזה.
amádnu sham, lo yodéa, khatsí sha'á kazé
We stood there for, I don't know, half an hour or so. (m. speaker)
Note where כזה goes: it follows the quantity it is hedging, unlike English about, which precedes it. And לא יודע dropped mid-sentence is not a confession of ignorance — it is a hedge on the number, exactly like English I dunno.
The filler learners notice first, כאילו, has a page of its own: כאילו. It is worth reading before you start using it, because unlike everything above it carries a social loading.
Holding the floor — and the one real error
These are the words that buy you time and stop somebody talking over you. Two of them are frozen; three of them inflect for the person you are talking to, and that is the trap.
| To a man | To a woman | To a group | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| תשמע tishmá | תשמעי tishme'í | תשמעו tishme'ú | listen — opens a turn |
| אתה יודע atá yodéa | את יודעת at yodá'at | אתם יודעים atém yod'ím | you know — softens what follows |
| תראה tir'é | תראי tir'í | תראו tir'ú | look — introduces a correction |
| רגע réga · שנייה shniyá | hang on — invariant, no agreement at all | ||
זה, את יודעת, לא באמת קשור אליי.
ze, at yodá'at, lo be'emét kashúr elái
It's, you know, not really anything to do with me. (to a woman)
רגע, רגע, תן לי לסיים את המשפט.
réga, réga, ten li lesayém et hamishpát
Hang on, hang on, let me finish the sentence. (to a man)
רגע and שנייה are the two safest things on this page for a learner, because they never change form and they do the most useful job: they hold your turn without committing you to anything. The gendered forms above are the ones that go wrong, and the reason is mechanical — English speakers learn listen and you know as single unchanging items and then use them with everybody. The full second-person system is on addressing men and women.
The same thing, twice
Five turns of ordinary conversation with the fillers left in. Speaker A is a woman, speaker B is a man.
אה... רגע, איך קוראים לזה, המקום הזה עם הפיצה ליד התחנה?
e... réga, eikh kor'ím lazé, hamakóm hazé im hapítsa leyád hatakhaná?
A: Uh... hang on, what's it called, that place with the pizza by the station?
מה, הזה? אמ... נדמה לי שקוראים לו רומא.
ma, hazé? em... nidmé li shekor'ím lo róma
B: What, that one? Um... I think it's called Roma.
כן, רומא! זה סוג של מקום משפחתי, לא משהו מפואר.
ken, róma! ze sug shel makóm mishpakhtí, lo máshehu mefo'ár
A: Yes, Roma! It's sort of a family place, nothing fancy.
תשמעי, אני חושב שזה סגור בימי ראשון. רגע, אני בודק.
tishme'í, aní khoshév shezé sagúr biméi rishón. réga, aní bodék
B: Listen, I think it's shut on Sundays. Hang on, I'll check.
אה, חבל. אז... בוא נעשה משהו אחר, לא יודעת, סושי?
e, khavál. az... bo na'asé máshehu akhér, lo yodá'at, súshi?
A: Oh, shame. So... let's do something else then, I don't know, sushi?
Now the same information as it would be written — in a message, a review, a note. Everything that was doing conversational work is gone, and what remains is the content.
איך קוראים למסעדה הזאת ליד התחנה?
eikh kor'ím lamis'adá hazót leyád hatakhaná?
What is the restaurant near the station called? (written)
היא נקראת רומא, והיא סגורה בימי ראשון.
hi nikrét róma, vehí sgurá biméi rishón
It's called Roma, and it's closed on Sundays. (written)
The written version is not just the spoken one with the gaps closed: the placeholder המקום הזה עם הפיצה has become the actual noun מסעדה, and five turns are now two sentences. But everything this page has listed went out with the rest — אה and אמ, רגע, אז, the placeholder הזה, סוג של, תשמעי and לא יודעת. None of it carried information, which is why writing does without it. Where the line between the two registers actually falls is mapped on spoken versus written Hebrew; what happens to these words phonetically at speed is on connected speech.
Common Mistakes
1. Freezing the gendered floor-keepers in the masculine. The one genuine grammatical error on this page. תשמע, תראה and אתה יודע all inflect, and a learner who has stored them as fixed English-style tags will address a woman in the masculine. Inside a single turn the clash is unmistakable.
❌ תשמע, את צודקת לגמרי
Incorrect — תשמע is the masculine form and clashes with את in the same breath. A woman is addressed as תשמעי: תשמעי, את צודקת לגמרי.
✅ תשמעי, את צודקת לגמרי, אני מודה.
tishme'í, at tsodéket legamréi, aní modé
Listen, you're completely right, I admit it. (to a woman, m. speaker)
2. Importing the English hesitation vowel. Uh and um are built on a schwa; Hebrew's אה and אמ are built on a plain e. It is a small difference and a very audible one, because a filler is the one sound you produce without thinking about how you are producing it.
3. Trying to translate somebody else's fillers. A listening problem, not a speaking one. When an Israeli says זה or אה mid-sentence there is nothing to decode, and a learner who stops to work out what זה referred to has already lost the next clause.
4. Writing them down. Not an error in speech and a real one on paper. אה, זה-as-placeholder and סוג של belong to the register that has an audience in the room; a message, an email or a review drops them, as the pair above shows.
5. Reaching for כאילו every time. It is the loudest filler and the first one learners notice, and it fills the same slot as English like, so it gets used for every hesitation there is. Hebrew's default for a straightforward stall is אה, not כאילו.
Key Takeaways
- Hesitation markers cannot be wrong. There is no correct quantity of them and no error in producing one. The only real mistake here is an agreement error.
- The Hebrew hesitation sounds are אה and אמ, on a plain e — not the English schwa of uh and um.
- זה is the all-purpose noun placeholder, and עשה plus הדבר הזה is its verb equivalent. Both come with an implicit promise that the real word is on its way.
- The repair phrases are איך אומרים, איך קוראים לזה, מה שנקרא, סוג של and postposed כזה — which follows its quantity, where English about precedes it.
- רגע and שנייה are invariant and are the safest floor-keepers a learner has.
- תשמע / תשמעי / תשמעו and אתה יודע / את יודעת / אתם יודעים do inflect, and freezing them in the masculine is the one genuine grammatical error on this page.
- All of it disappears in writing. That is register, not correction.
Now practice Hebrew
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Hebrew →Related Topics
- כאילו: Like, Sort OfB1 — One word, two senses, and Hebrew Wiktionary tags them as differently as it is possible to tag anything: the comparative כאילו is Mishnaic and unlabelled, the spoken filler is new, slang and youth-marked. Both are real Hebrew, and Yael Maschler has an account of why the second one spread.
- Connected Speech: What Israelis Actually DropB1 — The gap between the words you learned and the words you hear: Hebrew at speed deletes ה, swallows the shva, runs vowels together across word boundaries and fuses whole phrases into single words. This page maps the citation form onto what actually comes out of an Israeli's mouth.
- Spoken Hebrew vs Written HebrewB1 — Spoken and written Hebrew differ systematically in subordination, possession, negation, commands, and information packaging—not merely in vocabulary.
- אתה vs את, אתם vs אתןA1 — Hebrew has no gender-neutral way to say 'you'. אתה goes to a man and את to a woman — and the choice drags the verb, the imperative and the possessive along with it, which is why this is the error English speakers make on day one and are still making six months later.