Comment on I notice Indians speaking English tend to speak very fast. Are the Indian languages simply spoken faster?

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actual_patience@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Ok, so I heard a thing a long time ago about information density in languages, and that there’s a specific amount of information conveyed per second which is pretty consistent across languages, even when the number of sounds is higher or lower.

This is true.

Which means that a single word in English, for instance, would convey more information than a single word in Hindi.

I don’t think that’s the right interpretation. There are words in English that would require sentences to be made for each if conveyed in a different language. But the same is true vice-versa.

Have a look at subtitles for movies from one language to any other. Translators struggle conveying what should be paragraph long sentences of context behind a single word for one language. Do not get me started on double speak.

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