It may seem that all foreign languages are spoken at a rate that is just impossible for you to wrap head around, much less your tongue. However, this is more likely just an effect of your linguistic background. Preliminary researcher found that spoken languages produced sounds at roughly the same speed, however a more in-depth analysis revealed that there are some languages that are spoken faster than others. More specifically, silent pauses were similar across Spanish and English, while articulation and rate of speech was produced at a much higher rate in Spanish.
Given the conflicting results, a new study led by François Pellegrino looked at the “average information density” of 17 Eurasian languages. They used linguistic “bits”, defined as the minimum utterance that cuts the possible final linguistic utterance by half. Once they took this approach and analyzed 240,000 syllables, they found a similar production rate of 39.15 bits per second across languages.
Interestingly, when fast speech is a factor within languages, it ends up producing less informative content. Fast speakers tend to use more words yet they have lower average information content, than those who speak slower, lending credence to the adage “think fast, talk slow.”
