this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024

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It's fascinating that while languages vary wildly by speaking speed, information transfer is fairly similar. (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I’d like a visual of how much unnecessary elaboration different languages commonly use to make a point.
Though you can elaborate excessively for fun, how much is common?
And on the other end of the scale text speak is often extremely concise (not me tho ha). Would be cool to see and compare the limits.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I am curious about Arabic. I feel like it should be having the highest information rate.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Turkish seems inefficient. You spend the effort to talk quickly but don't get the reward of high info transfer speed like Spanish.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

The words are very modular and systematic, but you seemingly pay a price for it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

Wollen sie etwa behaupten, die Informationsübermittlungsgeschwindigkeit der deutschen Sprache sei unterdurchschnittlich? So eine Unverschämtheit!

[–] Apytele 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

English is pictured as such a smooth, almost perfectly normalized bell curve. On one hand it's such a versatile language that (largely due to colonialism) has undergone so much evolution and mixing with other languages that I can believe that. On the other hand it looks almost too normal. Odd.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

On the other hand it looks almost too normal. Odd.

It could indicate bias on the part of the researchers. I haven't read their methodology, but in my amateur study of languages, some languages have some interesting tricks for communication that don't translate to English well or efficiently. If English was used as the baseline, then the study ma not incorporate some of the neat things other languages can do as points to measure.

Mandarin has a word particle to communicate "completed action". This is used instead of conjugating verbs for tenses. Example: in English you might say:

"I went to the shop" 5 syllables

In Mandarin the literal translation back to English would be:

"I go to the shop [completed action]" 5 syllables

For the two measures listed of essentially Information Density and Speech Velocity, this benefit wouldn't show up, but if you're measure for something like Encoding and Decoding Burden (I'm making up these terms), then Mandarin could rank higher.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Looking up the article the baseline is French and English I'd say. So it might be biased, but I didn't read the article and even if I did, I'm a chemical engineer so what do I know of this field.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Could be bias. But, I wonder if it could be because English has borrowed so much from other languages.

It’s also interesting that English and French look so similar in the graphs. Both, have been the de facto international language for a long time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Thai is so efficient

[–] ironhydroxide 9 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Opposite. Look at the notes at the top of the graphs

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

Not as efficient as others in bits per second, but interestingly the syllable-to-bits ratio is tightly coupled.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Hard to tell. Need something like "bits of information per syllable" to get at efficiency. Just eyeballing it, Vietnamese, English, and Cantonese seem most likely the most efficient.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Cantonese and Vietnamese make sense, as they're are both tonal languages (along with Mandarin, Thai, Punjabi, and Cherokee apparently). English wastes tones on communicating stress or question vs statement.

[–] captain_aggravated 3 points 4 days ago

That was the issue I had with my elementary school spanish teacher. He spoke so fast that you just couldn't latch onto anything. It just sounded like DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDS aqui. DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDRS agostos.

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