A common “alternative filler word” in Malay is “apa nama”, literally “what name”.

in Hungarian it’s “izé” but in my dialect (I learnt from my granny) we use “hotyiják” it equals with watchamacallit
in Esperanto you can say “umo” you can use it as a verb “mi umas” meaning I’m doing a thing… or something like that :)
how do they say it in Arabic?

I’ve always liked the German word Dingsbums. The sound of it is just great. In English I usually prefer the word thingy. But stuff is also a very useful word.

In Danish we would probably say: ting, dims, dippedut, himstregims or something similar. Even the last two actually appear in the official list of how to spell words. (Don’t know the English term for such a book ;) )

“Thingamajig”, “doohickey”, “whattchamacallit”(also a chocolate bar), and just plain “thing.”

In Armenian, it’s pretty straightforward: “thing” translated as “pahn”/ “բան”
I hear Russians using “eta” / “это” when they seemingly can’t remember a word. I know I do. ;)

We say “stuff” and “like” a lot. I’ve seen spanish speakers say “bueno”, or “yyyyyyy”. Bengali people often say “maane” meaning “means”.

In Portuguese we say “ãããhhh…” when at a loss for words (that’s a nasal _a:_, a sound that has to be heard to be believed!). On a more verbal level, we say “coisa” (“thing”). I believe Argentinians say “este…” when searching for an appropriate word; it means “this…”.

É sin, or Ceard é sin, in Irish.

In French I mostly hear “chose” (thing), which is often preceded or followed by other words. E.g. “chose là…” (thing there…) “euh… c’te chose, tu sais?” (umm… that thing, you know?) I can’t think of any other words used, as most people tend to fill the empty space with either a description or the English equivalent.

In Italian, whatchamacallit would be
- “cosa” (thing)
- “come si chiama/dice?” (what’s his/its name?)
- the non-existent word “coso” (thing-o) in spoken Italian, not only used for things but for people too
- a plethora of regional words, for example “fresco” in Rome, which has an ironic feel and refers to an old and/or strange and/or funny tool, like something you buy in a flea market.

Spanish:
“cosa”, meaning “thing”, is always a popular one. Beyond that, I don’t know many others, though I am sure there are some.

In Hebrew, there are a few. When English-speakers say “uhhh…”, Hebrew-speakers and the like say “ehh…..” which is really very amusing. “כאילו/ke’ilu” meaning roughly “as if, like if” is very popular and goes where English-speakers would throw in “like”.

“Bums” happens to be part of a German expletive, snicker snicker.

When a Hebrew speaker finds difficulty to find a suitable word he uses the espression “ze, ma shmo” = this, what’s its name.

Many Australian languages have such a word, which usually can be inflected for case, and can form part of derived verbs “do whatsname”

When speaking french I tend to use “truc” and “machin” a lot. Although “chose” means “thing”, these other words have more of a “whatchamacallit” nature to me. Like, when I don’t know the word for something (i.e. a hole puncher) I’ll call it a “perce-truc” (hole punchin’-thing) or “machin à percer” (thing that punches holes).

Or “machin qui perce”…etc.

In norway we use words like dings, dingsboms (equal to the german “dingsbums”), duppeditt, greie.. But i guess “ting” (thing) is the most common one.

“Duppeditt”– haha, my favourite thus far. Norwegian just looks “cute” to me for some reason.

“juttu”, “semmoinen”, “asia” and “hauskuus” spring to mind from my use of Finnish.

In colloquial Arabic, we’d say something like “شو اسمه” or “ما اسمه” literally “what’s his’s name”.

One that I’ve seen in Spanish for a person whose name you don’t know is “Fulano,” which kind of functions like saying, “So-and-So”.

In German there is of course Dingsbums, as mentioned above, but there’re also the words Dings or Dingsda. Hm, are there words without “dings”… Yes. Teil or Zeug(s) (piece and ?stuff?). Any others? I think so, but I don’t remember any at the moment.

[ An aside to Minstrel Ayreon ]
Yes, we have “fulano” in Portuguese too. In fact, the three generic persons – the English language’s Tom, Dick and Harry, or John Doe & Co. – are called (in order) Fulano, Beltrano, Sicrano. :-)

“Thingummy” seems to be a peculiarity of the British. I’ve never run across that word in an American publication unless it’s a) a quote from a Brit, or b) an originally British book published in the US.

In Chinese, at least in our university, we often say “那个” (na ge) “然后” (ran hou) which mean “that” “then” separately. They are really meaningless, but quite popular now. I don’t know why. (I’m ashamed to say that I cannot communicate fluently without them!)

Spanish uses “chisme” often: “algún chisme…”

In spanish I’ve only heard este…In japanese i’ve heard my professor use eeto…… a lot. Any other fillers in japanese?