Ask HN: I often confuse words with another when I'm speaking, am I the only one? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I often confuse words with another when I'm speaking, am I the only one?

8 pointscx42net14 comments

Hi,

When I'm speaking (orally) I often misuse a word with another, saying "car" when I want to say "bike" for instance, because they have wheels. (That's the connection my brain make).

I think that when I'm speaking, I want to say words faster than my brain can build a sentence. By being able to follow, it simplifies the connections from my thoughts to my words (hence saying car instead of bike because the link is wheels and it doesn't have the time to think more in depth to ensure that's what I'm thinking about).

I'm suspecting that working on a computer for so many years might be the issue, where I spend most of my time speaking via a keyboard. That's why I'm talking about it here, on HN.

So I'm asking for your help, to know if I'm the only one, if this is something known, if this something that can be fixed, and how.

Thank you for your help.

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I'm quite lefty and I make this mistake often, so often that early in my life my parents took me to the doc thinking I had some sort of issue. I believe my right brain hemisphere is quite more developed than the other and the information when travelling from one side to the other isn't so fluent as other people. No matter how much I talk and practice, it doesn't get much better, but I've learned how to better compensate that with either using my left brain or with character.

Don't see it as a defect. Make it a quality.

In the end, it's not much of an issue. It sucks to communicate sometimes and I know I will never have that politician way of talking, but you can say sorry and people are ok with that and with a bit of experience dealing with those situations, you actually get to be funny or show some character.

I have no trouble working on my expertise and do absolutely well in math and abstract stuff though. Even with languages I do just fine, can speak 3 languages fluently, some others a bit well. I bet you can relate as well to things you do much better above others, focus on them. Don't sweat it :-)

Thank you.

I do have other advantages against other people, but I believe that everyone is better than others in specific areas, so I didn't consider them much ;)

I think everyone does this from time to time to some extent. I definitely do it with more technical jargon, and I often see other people do it. For example I will forget the official jargon and say something similar, but that will confuse someone who has the jargon embedded in their minds. Often I will resort to showing them the bit of the program or code I am talking about.

As for a solution. I don't know really. You could try toastmasters for public speaking, and practice speaking more slowly than you would normally speak in speeches. The funniest speeches I heard there were from someone who had a stammer and had to pause between each sentence to do a breathing exercise, but he used those pauses for building suspense in the story.

I've also been guilty of this for a long time. I annoy myself, and fear I undermine my credibility when talking to peers and managers.

> I think that when I'm speaking, I want to say words faster than my brain can build a sentence.

This is the explanation I've thought of for myself many times. What I find helps is to practice mindfulness and try to listen to what I'm saying.

I recall at one job, the companies core systems database tables had really absurdly long names. I made a point of learning these names precisely. People would look at me in amazement when I would precisely rattled off the names during meetings and technical discussions. Oddly, this really helped.

My wife has the exact same “problem” as you do.

In her case it presents itself in two main different forms:

- she will use all the correct words but will swap the order of the key substantives of the phrase. For example: use the knife to hold the steak and cut with the fork.

- she will do the above but instead of using one substantive from the current “context” she will swap it with one from the previous or next context.

She is an ESL teacher and YouTuber so I’m not sure it has much to do with anything programming related. She does spend quite a bit of time in front of the computer, though.

Another interesting detail is that she speaks really fast most of the time. Maybe that’s related.

Wow, I relate completely with what your wife is saying here! I do often mix words in a phrase or swap the context.

And man, I speak fast (don't articulate much). My friends used to call me Buzz Lightyear because I was speaking at lightspeed ;)

It's weird, but often instead of Monterrey Jack, I want to say Mercury Jack. It's the word that comes first in my brain, though I don't let it out of my mouth. It takes a few seconds to remember the proper name. I guess the words are pretty similar-looking in my brain. Oddly enough, I only seem to make the mistake when referring to the cheese and not the city, but it could simply be that I talk more about the cheese than the city, too.

You have to sort of suppress other complex thoughts when speaking about complex thoughts on the fly. Most of the time, consciously trying to simplify individual sentences about already-complex topics makes them easier to say without really harming the inherent complexity that ensues in the conversation.

Just don't worry about making mistakes, people will almost always give you the benefit of the doubt about what you mean or give you the opportunity to re-explain something or to take a pause to collect your thoughts.

That's indeed what often happens - having to re-explain or they understand what I meant to say. But every time I do this, I lose a bit of credibility, and that adds up in the long run.

Moreover, sometimes, I lose people completely because "car" was also correct in my phrase and made my phrase impossible to follow :/

How often does this happen? The limited bandwidth of communication vs. thought can be frustrating, but I don’t think “car” for “bike” is a natural substitution, even in a non-native language. They’re too dissimilar, not subsets, etc.

Assuming this happens frequently enough to be concerning, I’d be concerned!

I'm a bit concerned, hence my message here - but not too much to go see a doctor.

Maybe I'll drop a word next time I'm at the doctor in case he knows something ;)

I almost always say "lunch" instead of "dinner" but I guess that's much more natural than bike to car.

Yeah, you're definitely not alone. I don't substitute similar words that often, but I do garble sentences to an extreme more than I'd like to. It ends up sounding like word substitution, but completely nonsensical.

>I think that when I'm speaking, I want to say words faster than my brain can build a sentence.

That's pretty much what it feels like in my case.

>I'm suspecting that working on a computer for so many years might be the issue, where I spend most of my time speaking via a keyboard.

Same. My history includes fairly extreme real life social isolation for about 15-20 years. Didn't have any friends I'd see in person on any sort of regular basis during that time, including my entire adolescence.

As such, my good friends that I talk to on a daily basis have historically been remote. Communicating with them has always been about 80% keyboard and 20% voice. In terms of voice, it's always been push-to-talk out of preference. Unlike open mics (think phone calls or default Skype settings), PTT allows you to mull over your reply quite a bit more without it being considered awkward. Combine that with typing being the preferred method of communication otherwise—which allows even more time to formulate a reply—and it's little wonder.

Some other components that likely play a part include being less comfortable than an average person in many social situations and at times poor eye contact. It almost feels like the verbal centers of my brain are rendered dumb due to a combination of having to come up with things to say faster, and processing facial expressions/body language (which historically wasn't required very often). It's not surprising that it goes hand-in-hand with not really being able to get the word in edgewise most of the time, nor being particularly good at thinking up new topics of conversation when engaging in small talk.

Despite being extremely social in person the last couple years, it still persists, though usually it's the worst at the beginning of a conversation. That may have to do with difficulty switching from my internal voice (which is usually fast) to actually verbalizing things.

If it's any sort of meaningful conversation in a relaxed environment, there's rarely any problem. Likewise if it's people I'm already comfortable with. Alcohol tends to make the problem evaporate—even with strangers. My theory is it simultaneously slows me down a bit and lowers my speaking inhibitions considerably, killing off the over-analysis and mental/verbal speed mismatch that garbles sentences in the first place.

>So I'm asking for your help, to know if I'm the only one, if this is something known, if this something that can be fixed, and how.

Ultimately I think it's a latency thing. Some people aren't used to the lower reply latency that in-person interactions require.

Practice makes perfect I guess. Just keep talking to people in person more. I'm trying to do the same.

Yep, you are right. I identify in what you say here in many points.

As for the practice makes perfect, I recently started a "philosophic" group with a small set of friends where we speak about various stuff. The idea being to express my ideas, share my opinion, argue, and try to be understandable. Hope this wll yield some good results in the future.

Thanks :)

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