Oops, how is that again?

*Roger Rosenblatt

This essay describes the mistakes people make while speaking and the reasons why they make these mistakes. The mistakes are divided into categories: Slips of the tongue, faux pas, mistranslations and spoonerisms.

Slips of the tongue are common mistakes where the speaker says one thing when they mean to say another. It is a slip of the tongue when someone says, “Who are you?” instead of saying, “How are you?”

Usually a faux pas occurs when a person says something that he/she thinks harmless but it actually has a critical meaning that will upset some people. For example, when a nun said to a bishop, “How many lords my lumps?” instead of saying “How many lumps, my lord?” it was a faux pas.

Mistranslations are mistakes made when words in one language are translated badly into another language. For example, “Come alive with Pepsi” was translated as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from grave” into another language.

Spoonerisms are utterly different kind of verbal errors. Spoonerisms are the transposition of initial sounds of words in a sentence. For example, “Kinquering Kougs tittles take” instead of saying “Conquering Kings their titles lake”. The author gives many examples of each type of mistakes being made by famous people.

The essay looks at why we make mistakes. Several theories described. One theory is that mistakes show our inner thoughts. These are the thoughts we have inside us but we want to keep them secret.

The essay explains why we find mistakes humorous. For example, sometimes we find mistakes funny because we are being mean, but at other times, we laugh because we feel sympathy. This is because we all make mistakes.