Şey,  eh,......

Sometimes in the middle of a conversation, you can  hear someone starting a sentence with ´Şey, ....´

It seems as if the speaker uses that ´Şey,´  to give himself some time to think about the rest

of the sentence, so it would have no particular meaning.

Is this correct, and if not, what´s the meaning of it?

şey means  thing   .... sometimes it will be used in this context

but is often used as you described simply a filler word

one of my friends says it all the time i imagine it to be like our ehhh or umm just a word to allow the flow to continue while thinking

Thanks, inşallah!  And greetings from holland.

"şey" means "thing", but when you hear it at the start of a phrase as you said it´s something said when you do not know what to say or how to say something, like "well" in english.

And also "şey" is replaced to anything when the right word does not come to your mind, forexample, "pazardan şey aldım.Mango", "I bought x from the bazaar, mango", another example a dialog that goes like

 -"Filmi nasıl buldun?" (how did you find the movie?",

 -"Çok şey buldum filmi, öööö, abartılı"

in the middle of conversation ´ şey ´: what- do- you-call-it?

şey can also be used for dramatic effect. İf you don´t want to ruin a joke by saying something but gramatically it can´t go anywhere else, you can say şey and then fill in later.

What suprises me is how much Turks play around with şey, something I´ve honest to goodness heard is -Şey gibi bir şey falan- used when I asked a friend to describe something. The best way to think of şey is as if the person were saying umm to stall for time.

Oh another Hollander! Our group is increasing, one day we will take over these bed Americans on this website!