No alien race could ever blend in among humans until it learned to properly garble our languages, says journalist Michael Erard. The average speaker, scientists have found, makes between seven and 22 slips of the tongue each day and strings together an average of only 12 bona fide words before uncorking an 'œum,' an 'œer,' or some other meaning-free noise. The tricky part, for an outsider, is that such 'œdisinfluencies' adhere to fairly rigid rules. An 'œum,' for instance, indicates a longer pause than an 'œuh.' Inadvertent word substitutions almost always involve two words from the same grammatical category. And even the best speakers suffer a surge in disinfluencies when they converse with their hands tied behind their backs.
Erard's entertaining and 'œat times penetrating' survey first takes on Freud, said Charles Harrington Elster in The Wall Street Journal. The father of modern psychiatry postulated that every speaking blunder hid a secret, usually sexual, intent. But several years earlier, a Viennese philologist named Rudolf Meringer had already come much closer to the truth. Meringer argued that such gaffes tell us less about the speaker than about language itself'”particularly about how it's learned and how the mind manufactures it on the fly. Erard shifts easily from linguistic theory to a Toastmasters tournament, from scientific studies to a profile of the creator of TV's lucrative 'œbloopers' franchise, and his 'œenthusiasm for his subject is infectious.'
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