Summery myth 18

Some Languages are Spoken More Quickly than Others

Some languages sound faster than other languages. This is the same with accents. There are characteristic differences in speaking speed:

Measures of speaking in different languages

Investigators have chosen to measure the number of syllables spoken in an given amount of time. With these measurements people can find out which language is a little faster than the other, but this depends on if you pronounce everything in a good way.  Osser and Peng measured sounds per second and compared different languages with each other and saw that between several languages there were some little differences, but the overall differences are too small to count as a speed difference.

Speaking rate as an illusion

Our impression of a language being spoken faster or slower may depend on its characteristic rhythm. It is influenced by whether a language is perceived to be stress-timed or syllable timed.

Social and personal factors and speaking rate

Some people are naturally fast speaker, or when you are tired you speak slower. In every language there are personal and social factors with the sped language, it all depends on that.