Poor Thai down there at the bottom, speaking slowly and transferring information slowly.
Thai, the PNY USB stick of languages, apparently.
Actually fewer syllables per second is good, means you’re spending less effort speaking. It’s the ratio of information/syllables you want to maximize. Which means German/English/Mandarin/Vietnamese are roughly on par as the most “efficient” languages.
Some languages have fewer vowel sounds while others have an insane number (in Europe that would be Danish).
Thai has a lot, so speakers need to speak more slowly so the listener has time to distinguish words. But it also means that you can have more words per syllable.
It’s not about efficiency per se - it’s data and error correction
Just to add - Thai has a tonal system and distinguishes rising, low, medium, high and falling tones. This requires a bit more time to say so that there is time for the tone to change (or not change).
In practical speech though, the tones get reduced to something like 2-3.
My opinion on why Thai shows up this way is that pronouns and articles are often omitted, and a lot of meaning comes from very short end of sentence particles, and different vocabulary for different registers.
LMFAO PNY USB that’s poetic
This was one of the weirdest things I had to learn when I was learning spanish. The sounds are much faster but the information density was similar. For me as an english native speaker it felt like I was listening to a machine gun at first. Eventually I trained my ear and now both languages sound the same speed.
This is also why, to me, rapidly spoken natural Spanish and Japanese sound oddly similar if I hear it out of “the corner” of my ear, so to speak.
Which is funny cause I kinda speak Spanish lol
I recently had a conversation with a native Spanish speaker who lived in Japan and spoke Japanese fairly fluently. He said the exact same thing, it was surprising how similar they can be in this regard
Spanish and Japanese use the same sounds. For the most part, anyway; there are probably a few exceptions. This was unexpected and utterly blew my mind as a native Spanish speaker when I took Japanese lessons.
Take the longest, most complicated Japanese word. Write it out in romaji (Latin letters). And ask a native Spanish speaker to pronounce it. One who knows nothing of Japanese. They’ll pronounce it pretty much correctly. I was fascinated.
I am pretty skeptical about these results in general. I would like to see the original research paper, but they usually
- write the text to be read in English, then translate them into the target languages.
- recurit test participants from
USwestern university campuses.
And then there’s the question of how do you measure the amount of information conveyed in natural languages using bits…
Yeah, the results are mostly likely very skewed.
So I did a quick pass through the paper, and I think it’s more or less bullshit. To clarify, I think the general conclusion (different languages have similar information densities) is probably fine. But the specific bits/s numbers for each language are pretty much garbage/meaningless.
First of all, speech rates is measured in number of canonical syllables, which is a) unfair to non-syllabic languages (e.g. (arguably) Japanese), b) favours (in terms of speech rate) languages that omit syllables a lot. (like you won’t say “probably” in full, you would just say something like “prolly”, which still counts as 3 syllables according to this paper).
And the way they calculate bits of information is by counting syllable bigrams, which is just… dumb and ridiculous.
I take your point without complaint, but I still think you’re an alien for saying “prolly”
I mean, probs. It’s right there. Use that if you have to
it’s pro^b - ly
Alright, but dismissing the study as “pretty much bullshit" based on a quick read-through seems like a huge oversimplification. Using canonical syllables as a measure is actually a widely accepted linguistic standard, designed precisely to make fair comparisons across languages with different structures, including languages like Japanese. It’s not about unfairly favoring any language but creating a consistent baseline, especially when looking at large, cross-linguistic patterns.
And on the syllable omission point, like “probably” vs. “prolly," I mean, sure, informal speech varies, but the study is looking at overall trends in speech rate and information density, not individual shortcuts in casual conversation. Those small variations certainly don’t turn the broader findings into bullshit.
As for the bigram approach, it’s a reasonable proxy to capture information density. They’re not trying to recreate every phonological or grammatical nuance; that would be way beyond the scope and would lose sight of the larger picture. Bigrams offer a practical, statistically valid method for comparing across languages without having to delve into the specifics of every syllable sequence in each language.
This isn’t about counting every syllable perfectly but showing that despite vast linguistic diversity, there’s an overarching efficiency in how languages encode information. The study reflects that and uses perfectly acceptable methods to do so.
Well I did clarify I agree that the overarching point of this paper is probably fine…
widely accepted linguistic standard
I am not a linguist so apologise for my ignorance about how things are usually done. (Also, thanks for educating me.) But on the other hand just because it is the accepted way doesn’t mean it is right in this case. Especially when you consider the information rate is also calculated from syllables.
syllable bigrams
Ultimately this just measures how quickly the speaker can produce different combinations of sounds, which is definitely not what most people would envision when they hear “information in language”. For linguists who are familiar with the methodology, this might be useful data. But the general public will just get the wrong idea and make baseless generalisations - as evidenced by comments under this post. All in all, this is bad science communication.
But the general public will just get the wrong idea and make baseless generalisations - as evidenced by comments under this post. All in all, this is bad science communication.
Perhaps, but to be clear, that’s on The Economist, not the researchers or scholarship. Your criticisms are valid to point out, but they aren’t likely to be significant enough to change anything meaningful in the final analysis. As far as the broad conclusions of the paper, I think the visualization works fine.
What you’re asking for in terms of methods that will capture some of the granularity you reference would need to be a separate study. And that study would probably not be a corrective to this paper. Rather, it would serve to “color between the lines” that this study establishes.
This conjecture explains the results surprisingly well. If the original was written in French, which then got translated to English, which was then used as the basis of translation for the other languages that would explain the results entirely.
There’s always Google Scholar.
In Finnish, I can simply ask, “Juoksenneltaisiinko?” whereas in English, I have to say, “Should we run around aimlessly?”
Traipse?
That’s the full sentence asking if you want to run around aimlessly.
Interesting word, I hadn’t heard of that one before. While not exactly perfect translation, it seems like a similar kind of word nevertheless. Doesn’t exactly seem to refer to running directly though.
I guess that in the case of my example, it’s more of a demonstration of how weirdly Finnish language can work. Juosta = run, juoksennella = run around aimlessly, juoksenneltaisiinko? = should we run around aimlessly?
Yeah but no-one would ever really use a word like that. It’s just the example given in all memes, but a a more realistic one than epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhään. I think it would be more probable that in that scenario, a Finn might say something like “pitäiskö juoksennella vähäse?”
But it is a good feature we have, yeah. Imagine trying to learn all those, whereas now they just come more or less naturally. (For that wordmonster, it takes a bit of concentration and I’m still unsure whether I typoed or not but whatever.)
Frolic?
Not the same thing. The complete sentence in English would be “do you want to frolic with me?”, which in Finnish is mashed together in a single word as the example given above. The chaining is something like “frolic-aimlessly-us-youwanna?”, though not by words but by endings.
It’s a similar story for Swedish and German for example. Not exactly the same as Finnish, but the whole mashing words together for them to make better sense. I’m starting to think that English is the odd one out.
One example could be “kommunikationsdepartementssekretariatsanteckningar” (communication department secretary’s notes). But an English example would be where Swedish, German, I guess Finnish, would say “blackboard” instead of “black board” to remove the ambiguity while English mostly does the latter.
Compound words are very different than agglutinative conjugation though. In such languages, you don’t just mash words together, you also modify them to encode all sorts of extra information into one word. You can form full, grammatically correct sentences that way. Can’t do that with compound words because you can’t compound them into a complete sentence.
A famous, powe example is the word “çekoslovakyalılaştırabildiklerimizdensiniz” from Turkish, which is like Finnish in that regard. It’s a complete sentence that means “you are one of those who we have managed to make a czechoslovakian”. The object, subject, verb, tense, and more are all in there. Obviously that’s quite a bit more complex than word together-mashing.
This is above my linguistic pay grade as I’m barely able to string together a coherent sentence when working, but, I think the moral here is that English is a crap language (at the very least very messy and lacks qualities found in other languages).
Is that a common question to be asked in Finland?
Depends on how good drugs you’ve got
So if I’m reading this right, French (closely followed by English) tends to convey the most info per unit time?
Yes but they also utilize smell.
As a french, I’m very surprised by this, as when I see a text in French side-by-side with its English translation, the English version is usually shorter. It may be a difference between speech and text, but it’s still surprising.
I really thought the information density of French was pretty low, compared to English or Breton, for example.
Written French is slow (needs more words )
Spoken French IS faster
I think that’s due to English spelling vs French spelling. The latter uses a lot of letters to make a sound that could be recognized with simplified spelling. O = eaux
spoiler
as a fr*nch 🤢
Spoiler didnt work ;)
Spoiler worked perfectly 🤮
I think i read a study long ago, about the speed of transmiting information being faster in languagues of great empires. Sounds logical to me and matches English, French, Chinese.
What produces the stretched graphs like Italian and German? What do these humps mean?
Variability in the length of words, loads of very short and very long words? Just a guess
That is likely part of it and also explains why languages like Japanese are more tightly grouped, as there is less spread in word length for Japanese versus English or Italian.
Both of those languages LOVE to compound their nouns - smashing smaller words into massive ones. Like the simple “pasta + asciutta = pastasciutta = dried pasta” or not simple “Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän = Danube steamship transport company captain”. All languages do it, but these do it with gusto.
Maybe they didn’t account for various factors like age or mood.
Moreover, Munic has 130 words per minute and dortmund has 180 words. There’s a ddifference in the dialect
https://preply.com/de/blog/sprechtempo-in-deutschland/ the numbers are just estimations and not a hard fact.
I would guess, if it’s solid empirical work behind this, that there’s just greater differences internally between German and Italian speakers than for many other languages. Having lived in both Germany and Italy, I do not struggle to believe this is the case.
My hump my hump my hump, my lovely language lumps.
Inaccurate for Italian because 50% of the language is conveyed by auditory volume, hand gestures and body language … and espresso, lots and lots of espresso.
Turkish is also inaccurate because 25% of the language is in the eyes … those intense eyes where you can’t tell if someone is excited, energetic, full of life or psychotic / murderous.
hand gestures
🤌
That’s what I mean … just that hand gesture depending on who made it and in what circumstance just conveys a ton of information without saying a word.
It could mean … “hey that was fantastic spaghetti and the sauce was wonderful”
Or it could mean … “that was a ballsy move you did last night … imma gonna keep my eye on you and burn down your house next week”
As someone who speaks both French and English, I’m surprised to see French as leading “information density” language. Most French terms have been incorporated into English. Language tends to be behind on technology terms. Language doesn’t have any noticeable difference in short syllable common words to English. It also seems to me that French speakers have an easier time in being vague. I have the impression that English is more precise.
Looking at the two curves, it looks like they are pretty close but French edges out English because of the speed it’s spoken at.
Even when it was fresh in my mind, I was never able to follow French tv because they just go so fast.
Yeah like “qu’est-ce que c’est ?” Which is just “what’s that?” (I speak both too) would never have guessed French had more information encoded, french translations are always longer too (but you don’t always pronounce all ofc).
I think this moreso demonstrates how tedious written french is. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” is significantly faster to say than “what’s that?”
I’d wager if the chart was on information density per written letter or word french would be way further behind
Right, the spoken french could be written more or less as Kès-ke-cè.
Yeah, I could also see there being variability between dialects and how much they respectively pronounce in a word. “What’s that?” could easily become “waz-at?” which is much quicker to say.
I’d say it’s more equal in time used, but otherwise spot on 😁
In most cases, being vague requires more informational transfer. To be vague but still connected to whatever is the signified, you need to give more information around the idea rather than simply stating the idea. Think about being vague about how you feel versus being blunt about it.
I had the same feeling. I honestly just feel like English is a junk drawer of depth borrowing various languages, but maybe average speakers don’t try to dig deep into it?
I feel like the multitude of tenses in French help with being more precise.
The tenses don’t add precision, IMO. There is a plural them instead of him/her but it sounds the same as the singular him/her. There is a plural you that sounds different, but there is also a polite singular you that is the plural you.
Both were massive empires. Makes sense that imperialism would put selective pressure on language. Historically you’re either limited in words by space on a paper or what can be easily repeated by messengers.
Cowards left out Navajo.
Yeah but 30% of the information in French are the “uhhh’s” lmao
They solved that by not pronouncing half the language.
Lmao facts
Speaking of “data is beautiful”, IMO a 2D scatter plot would be very useful for visualizing this relationship. This chart does provide the distribution for each language, as opposed to just the average, but at the expense of making correlation (or lack thereof) difficult to see.
Also, the ratio of the largest to the smallest value for syllables per second and for bits per second appears to be fairly similar. I have to eyeball values but it looks like Japanese : Thai is 8.0 : 4.7 for syllables per second (so 1.7) whereas French : Thai is 48 : 34 (so 1.4) for bits per second.
For each language, the distribution of syllable rate looks very much like the distribution of bit rate. I would like to see a chart of bits per syllable. Oh, and I wonder how this affects reading speed and the rate of information transfer via reading, especially for different spoken languages that use similar written characters.
The French/English/German curves are interesting, given the relationships between them.
I wonder if this implies English has more in common with French than German.
Or how the German and Italian curves are so similar, does that reflect a similarity in language or in how it’s used (cultural)?
English is vocabulary wise a neolatin language like french. More than 50% of english words are of latin origin, from roman latin to anglo-norman-french to modern french. English has also lost almost all noun declinations present in german and old english, with the exception being the genitive 's like dog’s tail), and the plural, that takes an -s suffix (apple apples), which makes it similar to french and neolatin languages. So, there is something to it.
yeah but, while most of the english vocabulary is romance-based, the grand majority of what we actually use in daily life is germanic
English has a lot in common with both, being a language that has been bludgeoned by both.
Isn’t it the other way round? The english having bludgeoned the other languages and made the result theirs? And english and german both are west germanic languages and share a common ancestor.
No. English got its French words after William the Conqueror of Normandy (France) invaded England and conquered the Anglo Saxons.
Huge amounts of English vocabulary came to us through French. English shares structure with Germanic languages, and retains some vocabulary, but a lot of what remains is considered the “vulgar” term for a thing, while the Romance-root word is the “proper” one. Largely thanks to the Norman conquest if I recall. French was the court language.
If I’m misremembering I’m sure someone will correct me. It’s been 20+ years since I took Latin 😂
I always thought that English was an efficient language.
Switch to Rust. I speak Rust btw.
On arch
Nah NixOS
I would imagine this is because there is a ‘comfortable’ rate of information exchange in human conversation, and so each given language will be spoken at a pace that achieves this comfortable rate.
So it’s not that the syllable rate coincidentally results in the same information rate, but the opposite - the syllable rate adjusts to match the desired information rate.
Interesting thought.
I’d add it’s probably also that 90%+ of conversation isn’t about “data transfer” in the technical sense, but relationship building. So information volume isn’t usually crucial.
Now let’s see this work done in technical fields, especially change management, maintenance, emergency services, etc, where time is crucial. Those environments tend to have very “coded” language, so we don’t have to say a paragraph whenever we call for a very specific function/tool/action.
I suspect the languages would still have similar curves, but the data rates would increase.
I believe the percentage for information exchange is a bit higher, even in everyday life. I mean we also socialize, talk about the weather etc. But many times I open my mouth, I actually want to convey some information or gather some… That probably varies widely between cultures (and individual people and rhe exact social setting). I read some people like to chat with their cashiers while others don’t. And for relationship building we also have body language etc so lots of that doesn’t even need verbal language.
Wonder how Thai is the zipfile of languages.
It is multiplexed with five tones and a variety of different registers to signify relationship, status, and variable interplay between the two based on situation.
- University Thai language learner, linguist, and professional Thai reading, writing, speaking in Thailand for several years
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My very casual understanding is that grammatical structure or gender isn’t really a thing, or articles for that matter, making it very contextual and tonal language so a zipfile isn’t even a bad metaphor.
However, in this case it seems like the human brain is the default Windows zip program.
