Can anyone explain this?

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I keep reading and hearing words in a way in which the world's biggest illiterate would communicate.

For example, my mind keeps trying to convince me that it should be "teached" instead of "taught". Another is "took" and "taken". I know that it should be "he has been taken to the hospital", yet my unhinged mind keeps repeating "took to the...." or worse still "tooken".

Is this some form of insidious manifestation of anxiety or am I losing my mind?

It's cruelly ironic because I have always been praised for being articulate.

Furthermore, I find that recently I am saying the wrong word in public.

Last week, I repeatedly said "tickets" instead of "train" when I was attempting to ask about train times.

I tend to go through phases of forgetting how to pronounce words.

Or sometimes i can't remember a word, and use the wrong one.

Or tongue tied and thats in normal company where i am most relaxed.

The one the kids hate is me forgetting their names and calling by a siblings name, sometimes i use a few wrong names.

I think stress can cause this

this isn't illiterate or stupid. It's actually very logical.

What you are doing is applying the current rules for
English language word formation and verbal use to words that follow an irregular pattern.
If you want to get more insight into this, send me a direct message or find a book about the
history of the language.

I think he IS suffering from stress of some kind.

But thats true that English itself is so illogical. The past tense of "go" is "went" because a thousand years ago there were two verbs for "go". One was "go", and the other was something like "wend", and the two got collapsed into one. We still say "wending your way through a maze", but thats the only remnant of the wend verb besides "went".

New verbs that enter the language are conjugated the modern way: you can say that I "googled him", and that I "wikied him", that "I friend zoned him" But you cant say "I teached him", or that I "goed out with him". But WHY you cant say the last two I am sure is not obvious to foreigners because both are perfectly logical.

But it feels almost like my brain wants me to make errors even on occasions when I can identify that they are incorrect. Although it could be attributed to stress and anxiety (I am in the progress of moving out), I fear it may be something more severe.

Thanks for the feedback, folks.

Running over my own scant knowledge of neurological disorders, just keep an eye on it. If it becomes accompanied by any unpleasant motor changes or deficiencies over time, then something more serious could be up.

Moving is very stressful. Even if you don't realize it, sense it, or feel it in any way. After the move is over and you get out of "survival mode" it might come swamping in on you and then you might become aware of it.

That's a good point. If you have always had issues with being at a loss for words or choosing the wrong word (like me), it's less of a worry, but if this is a new thing, you might want to talk to a neurologist about it. I do tend to have more problems getting words out when stressed, but I had an awful stutter and tendency to get syllables mixed up when I was a child so I think it's more to do with that.

I live in rural Alabama and down here you hear a lot of those exact words used that way. Some are just people being completely incorrect and some are actually part of a sort of a country Deep South redneck dialect.

Instead of saying "will you take me to the store?" you'll hear "you carry me to the store?" Or "run me up to the store?" Or my personal favorite "ride me over to the store". I hear " tooken" from time to time but its used like "she got tooken to the hospital".

I also dislike " visitate" which people sometimes use for visit. "We coming to visitate for a little bit" or "she went visitatin' with the Jehovah's witnesses".

We also add a lot of unnecessary words along with bad grammar. " we done got up and gone all the way over yonder to the doctors " which simply means "we went to the doctors office". Many people also add " up to the store" or "over to the store" instead of just "to the store".

Since you're in the UK I cant put this down to hearing a country Southerner speak, so I don't know why you're doing it.

One quirk that I've seen as particular to the Deep South is that we measure distance in time. When giving directions we will say " go up 82 for about 30 minutes and then take a right when you get into town" or "go down Bear Creek for about 3 or 4 minutes and then take a left by the tree hit by lightening". But that has nothing to do with your issue.

Have you been watching YouTube videos of Southerners by any chance? People tend to pick up on our accents and ways of speaking fairly fast, even if they are trying very hard not to. That's why my husband who is from up North now sounds like a good ole boy. Then again he's been here since he was 18.

I have heard of a thing called "word salad" before where words get mixed up. Maybe a mild version of that?

As far as I know, all natural languages have irregularities like those. Romance languages, for example, have forms of 'to go' coming from three different Latin verbs. It'd only be a surprise to native speakers of Esperanto or Lojban. The former (denaskuloj) actually exist, but they learn at least a natural language since they're little kids, too.

With the exception of run/ran, I have never had experiences like this before. My mind is tormenting me with illiterate statements and it's driving me crazy!

I do not know if this is similar. But the idea that the brain does what it wants regardless of what you want it to do is something I have had happen to me. Not so much in language though. Here is an example:

When a kid I was walking in the street at night. Neighborhood, no traffic. Just dark. A car came down the road. My brain is saying go left, go left. My body jumped to the right and in front of the car. Not close enough that I could not recover and get out of the way. But, it did the opposite and then had to compensate.

I've noticed that in several cases throughout my life. I want to say one thing and another comes out. I want to do one thing and the body does the opposite.

It's not often, but it happens at many of the wrong times or worse, in front of people and it just makes things really, really awkward.

If this is similar, then I feel for you. And, it's not an indicator of intelligence. I'm a fairly bright guy and this happens to me all the time, and usually at the worst times. And, I see your writings and I detect no deficit. You seem pretty bright from what I gather here.

You know the right way to say, but your brain would tend more to uses grammar structure and basic elements to create verbal expression, rather than repeating global already heard structures?
Analytical and creative brain?

I do that as well ...
When i concentrate on several "important" things at a time, what i say is mixed.
Maybe unconciously worried by your train tickets, while asking for train times in this case.

I do not consider myself to be a particularly bright or creative chap. Paradoxically, I have always thought of myself as an analytical idiot. I ruminate a lot but constructive action is seldom taken.

The major changes that are transpiring in my life must be stress-inducing (I say "must be" because it's difficult for me to ever identify how I am feeling), so there's one possible explanation for the mistakes that are arising in my speech.

My recent ASD diagnosis was certainly a shock, too. I may still be coming to terms with it.