• Snot Flickerman
    link
    fedilink
    English
    109
    edit-2
    21 days ago

    Poor Thai down there at the bottom, speaking slowly and transferring information slowly.

    Thai, the PNY USB stick of languages, apparently.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      23
      edit-2
      20 days ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1120 days ago

        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

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          820 days ago

          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).

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            219 days ago

            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.