Why your brain just can't remember that word (btw bilingualism makes it harder)
newscientist.com
newscientist.com
The disfluencies that this study looks at regards rarely used words. Fluent casual speech isn't the best place to look for such disfluencies anyway, so i don't know that listening to people on the subway is a good demonstration.
Also, while code-switching may be a way to get around tip of the tongue experiences, it is a considerably more complicated phenomenon, and there is likely to be a variety of other factors and considerations to take into account when studying code-switching.
The speculation isn't unfounded though, although it isn't appreciably strong here. Word choice comes substantially faster when the most efficient expression can be chosen without any self-monitoring. It's quite plausible that in this case you'll find less instances of tip of the tongue.
While the experiment here relied on rare words, and I'm just one data point, but I get ToT probably once for every 2000 words I say. When rapid code-switching is consciously available, I can quickly avert it because I have fast access to good candidate words, which reduces the apparent occurrence.
If ToT is taken as a speech disfluency from unresolved competition for word access, you could mitigate it simply by creating an imbalance between the signal strength such that winner takes all (in which case the subway example does demonstrate something useful, although as you point out, the variables are jumbled up). Somehow I got a deja vu just now. This has been discussed here before, or somewhere, or what I am writing is coming from something else I have read...
I also realize that ToT cannot be reduced to simple competition, but it is also plausible that slow access and competition manifest similarly, i.e. obstructed speech flow, while partial semantic access. WEAVER++ tried to explain this and I liked it very much (obviously I don't know what's state of the art now).
While skimming this text I caught myself saying this to my brother, see how much of it can you understand:
"Accountkayga charge-garee caawa, depositku wuxuu ku dhacayaa yawmayn aw thalatha".
Three English words with Somali conjugation suffixed with a pure arabic phrase. Wrong in three languages :-P
[EDIT: Ironically, had a grammatical error!]
Fluency in English is the only thing that matters in today's world.
Anything that hinders your ability to speak it at the highest level possible (e.g., learning other languages) is a mistake.
CLARIFICATION: What I resent is that English is not my first (and preferably only) language.
You're looking at it wrong. English is the closest thing we have to a human lingua franca. I hope you're not bashing it for nationalistic reasons, because, even if it owes its ubiquity to an imperialist past, English today is the property of its non-colonial speakers as much as its native speakers.
You will appreciate this oddball pseudo-germanic, latin-esque language when you venture out of its home turf: I tutored English to Arab students who were learning it to communicate with Chinese manufacturers, and a Vietnamese musician who wanted to reply to his Myspace fans, including a Thai girl who has a crush on him :-D
Try to love whatever culture and language your parents gave you, for starters, regardless of their utility or perceived social stature.
I used to worry if it was some kind of early warning of Alzheimers ... good to know this phenomenon has a more benign explanation too.
I have gotten into the habit of first declaring what the word starts with, sounds like, and approximates. This lets the listener help me out. Then I usually use a metaphor, which is often inappropriate: "how much groping in the dark did you have when you [started using this analysis software]?" Then I get weird looks but you end up grabbing their attention, sometimes they find the word for you, and other times the vocabulary comes back to you a few sentences later.
In the above example, I didn't find the word, but thankfully the point made its way across. It was further weird because this was at an MRI scanner, so somebody was literally "groping in the dark."
I also remember embarrassingly forgetting the word for "fly" (bug), pointing around in the air, and said, "the, the, the, thing." I use pronouns lavishly too: did you cut a hole in the thing to put the thing in the thing? --> did you cut a hole in the wood block to put the slab's protrusion into the wood block?
I usually find myself knowing the word in English but instead of it coming out, my brain keeps thinking and trying to spit out the Polish word. Then, a second later it clicks or someone corrects me. It's annoying, but I'd rather speak two languages than just one :)
However, if we are just speaking amongst ourselves its a lot easier because usually while you can't remember the word in the language you should be using, you remember its synonym in the other language.
Who cares about the science... I feel validated! :)