How often do slips occur?
Nobody knows exactly, but they are quite common. Listen for yourself for a few days, and you’ll be amazed at how frequent they are. It may turn out that they occur in clusters. Once you make a slip, you might remain for a while in a kind of heightened state that makes slips more likely. If you want to try to find out for yourself how frequently slips occur, just listen to people around you for a few days. That amount of time should be enough for you to hear an example of each major kind of slip. I’ve been recording my slips for a research project. sometimes, I go for hours with no slip. Sometimes, I have a flurry of one every two minutes or so. Very annoying and very funny for those around me! I believe that one reason people aren’t very aware of slips of the tongue is the amount of edited speech we hear on a daily basis. All television shows (except the very occasional live show) and commercials are edited. So are movies. Live news is read, not spontaneously spoken, also making slips
