Why Some Languages Sound Faster than Others
When you listen to people speaking a language you don't understand, it may sound like the words are traveling past your ears at the speed of light.
But some languages do seem to be spoken faster than others. Even if you know a little Spanish or Japanese, watching a TV show in those languages is not easy!
And there's a good reason for this — they are spoken faster!
Speakers of these languages use more syllables per second, according to a 2019 study.
In those two languages, speakers use almost eight syllables per second.
Researchers looked at 17 different languages. They took 170 recordings of native speakers reading the same 20 texts translated into their language and compared the speeds.
Mandarin, for example, was spoken at just over five syllables per second.
But that doesn't mean that conversations in Mandarin last a lot longer than those in Japanese.
No, researchers found that while there are differences in the speeds at which languages are spoken, the speeds at which people convey information are all about the same.
So how does that work? To understand more, the researchers looked at each syllable in the texts and at how much information each one conveys.
There are some single-syllable words that give us quite a lot of information; for example, the words "hope" or "love" in English.
These give us much more information than many single syllables that are nothing more than sounds or parts of words.
Some languages are packed more densely with information so speakers don't need too many syllables to convey the same amount of information.
The average Spanish syllable is not densely packed with information, so people speak faster. Mandarin, however, is densely packed with information, so it's spoken slower.
That means everyone gets to the end at just about the same time!
