Oops! How’s That Again? – Roger Rosenblatt

Why the examples in essay are given only of great or big persons?

It’s so because the tongue slips are not only done by normal people but also done even by great or big persons of higher status.    

Types of Tongue Slips:

Mistranslation: mistake in translation

Spoonerism: The transposition / substitution of sounds to each other: accidental verbal error: an accidental transposition of initial consonant sounds or parts of words, especially one that has an amusing result, for example, “half-warmed fish” for “half-formed wish”]

Bloopers: Public blunder; spoken wrong in radio, press, etc.

Faux pas: tactless mistake

Why do we laugh?

• To discover the hidden motive of the speaker.
• Relief by a change.

“Oops! How’s That Again” is an essay written by Rosenblatt and this essay has a humorous tone. Through the humorous tone also, the essayist has tried to reflect the bitter reality of human beings when they make mistake when they speak. He enriches his discussion with remarkable examples; although, as befits its subject. He is much concerned with the psychological causes of bloopers.

Human beings often make mistake knowingly and unknowingly when they speak. After making mistake they also apologize for it. From the uneducated person to highly intellectual and educated, scholar, different mistakes are made according to their level. This essay describes the mistake the people make while speaking and the reasons behind it are divided into four categories. They are as follows: i. Public Blunders ii. Memorable Translations iii. Bloopers iv. Spoonerisms.

Public Blunders are the mistakes made by the people when they give speech. While delivering the speech, they don’t actually care for the grammatical mistakes or vocabulary mistakes. These mistakes are specially committed by especially by the political leaders when they deliver their speech. They try to give emphasis by giving different examples but their sentences are not totally complete. This happens due to their tongue slip. Here the speaker may be trying to give message from one view but the different audience may take it in wrong way.

Memorable translations are the mistakes generally done by the people who speak very fast. This is also related to the psychological condition of the listener. The words spoken by the fast speaker may not be easily understood the real words. There may be misunderstanding between the speaker and listener. The person with weak psychology, if, wrongly interprets the words of the speaker, it may bring violent situation.

Bloopers are the mistakes done foolishly and not tried to correct. These mistakes are very simple types of mistakes, which are not given much importance by the speaker. This may be the habit of some people. Spoonerisms are the mistakes, which are done by the use of incorrect words due to tongues slips. Here, wrong words are not known by the listener as the speaker immediately tries to replace the wrong word when he comes to know the mistake. While the replacement of words the speaker should be conscious as wrong replacement can misinterpret the actual meaning.

There are different views about the verbal errors according to different people. Victoria Fromkin, a linguist, says that the verbal errors happen due to tongue slips concerned with the brain. Before the words are expressed, thought is placed by the brain into a grammatical framework. Sigmund Freud, a psychiatrist, presents his theory about the verbal error in different way. According to him, a tongue slips are caused by the network of id (unconscious mind), ego (subconscious mind) and superego (conscious mind). When people make mistakes, it has become the trend to laugh at them. Why do we laugh at them we don’t know. According to the philosopher Henri Bergson, the act of laughter is caused by any interruption of normal human fluidity or momentum. So, tongue slips are like slips of banana peels. We simply make fun and hoot at the errors simply to break the monotonies.

Questions Answers:

1. Into what groups has Rosenblatt organized his numerous examples of verbal missteps?

This lesson is concerned with the most natural aspect of human behaviour – the speech mistakes. Such speech mistakes or verbal errors are common features of our daily life. No body can claim that he has not committed any verbal mistake. So, the writer of the present lesson has discussed the topic of verbal errors. The verbal errors are categorized under four headings. They are: mistranslation, spoonerism, bloopers, and faux pas.

Mistranslation accounts for a great share of verbal errors. Mostly, while trying to translate the things from one language to another such mistakes take place. The writer has given the striking example of the slogan “Come alive with Pepsi”. Some one trying to translate it from English into German language happened to translate as “Come alive out of the grave with Pepsi”. Yet, another person translated it as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave”. Similarly, several other examples of mistranslation can be given.

The next type of verbal error is spoonerism. Spoonerism is the transposition of initial or other sounds of the words by mistake. The writer has given several examples of it. One example is – “You have hissed all my mystery lectures.” “You’ve tested the whole worm and must leave by the first town drain.” In fact, the speaker wanted to say you have missed all my history lectures. In fact, you’ve wasted the whole time and must leave by the first down train”. Another short example is “Our queer old dean (discipline maintaining teacher) instead of saying our dear old queen.

The next type of verbal mistake is bloopers. “A blooper is a public blunder or an embarrassment mistake. Mostly, such mistakes are made on radio, television or perhaps in public speeches. For example, a radio announcer called “General Foods as General Fools”. Bloopers are the low line of verbal errors. They consist a large number of toilet jokes.

The last type of verbal error is faux pas. Such mistakes are tactless mistakes. The striking example of such mistake is the welcome of the Indian president by asking who are you? whereas, the man wanted to say how are you?

This is not the whole about verbal errors. There are lots and lots of them and the more we consider about them, the more we learn about them.