Just curious as to whether it’s cultural, intellectual, occupational, or neurological.
Particularly intriguing (to me) is some folks’ habit of speeding up dramatically near the end of a thought or sentence - often with a kind of jackhammer intonation and a hard stress on each syllable. It’s frustrating to hear (again, to me), because it messes with clarity, betrays hidden tension on the speaker’s part, and on top of that, hints that they’re more concerned with talking than being heard.
What’s it like being a fast talker? What’s it like being their listener?
Ye-es…I have worked on it my whole life and have significantly slowed down. It helps that my family doesn’t really understand my American accent once I really get going, and it also helps that I have put my foot in my mouth many times when talking really fast. I have learned to think before I speak and go carefully word by word.
Why? Well, I have so much to say and my mind is like a rabid squirrel, running everywhere, and I want to get my point across, and when I was younger it was due to a lack of self-esteem, meaning I was afraid you’d stop listening if I didn’t hurry it up and get it all out…
Depends on what you mean by fast. I lived in Kentucky for several years, but only about 3 hours away. While I was in Kentucky, people told me a sounded like a fast-talking Yankee. When I’d come home, friends commented on how I’d developed a slow-talking Southern drawl.
I talk too quickly. Whenever I’ve done public speaking training, that’s been the feedback on my first speech (I get better as time goes on, but if there’s a year or more between training sessions, I lose the ground I’d previously gained).
Reasons I talk too fast:
My brain (like everyone’s) moves so much faster than spoken words that I’m already five ideas ahead of whatever is coming out of my mouth. I don’t want to lose the concept that is in my head right now, so I speed through what’s left to be said.
If I am speaking publicly, I am nervous. That nervous energy translates into speed. I just want to get it over with.
The faster I go, the more certain I can be of not losing my train of thought or skipping key points.
I tend to assume (though I know it really isn’t true) that everyone understands the topic as well as I do. Speaking more slowly FEELS (again, I know this isn’t true) like I am being condescending, or speaking down to my audience, because I am going slower than my normal speed in order for them to follow me.
It takes a tremendous conscious effort to slow the hell down. Truly. It’s not that I care more about speaking than being heard, it’s that because going fast is my natural state, I assume that’s the case for everyone. It really was a shock to learn that I talk too fast for many people; I thought I was respecting their quick wits. Honestly.
And just so it’s perfectly clear where I am coming from: when someone speaks too slowly, I want to stab them in the face. I fucking hate listening to the slow talkers. Move on, already, I get what you’re saying!
The object of your ire might just be somebody with a stammer. While the average person talks at roughly 130 words per minute, a stammerer might well run into trouble at that speed. Some therapists teach a slow speech method whereby the patient learns to drop his rate when encountering difficulties. I’ve listened to people talking at 60 wpm. It’s slow but it’s preferable to interrupted conversation.
I do. I’m from New York. Nuff said. (I walk fast also. When I was a messenger in Manhattan I basically kept up with people. When I lived in Louisiana I traveled at twice the speed of anyone else.)
I can’t help it. I think too fast. It really doesn’t help that I don’t enunciate very well (a Southern accent at high speed is not a good thing) and that everybody here has Southern ears, so I get told to slow down a lot by library patrons. Particularly those with slow brains.
I think I subconsciously feel that if I don’t get my entire thoughts or story out quickly, the person I’m speaking to will lose interest and walk away. It’s probably the opposite of reality.
I have a friend who talks
really
slow, and
pauses
often
while he searches for just the right
word.
And he’s one of the best storytellers I know. I can’t wait to see where he’s going.
I speak very fast. I was never aware of it until I heard my own voicemail that I left my kids at home. My manner of speech reminded me a lot of one of my aunts. Ironically my dad (he is that specific aunt’s brother) speaks so slowly sometimes I swear I could just pull the words out myself. Sadly it’s because he’s getting older and the right words don’t come to him at times.
No, speaking slowly (stammer or non-stammer) is really freaking annoying. Hurry up, already!
Yes, I talk fast. I’ve been told this fairly regularly since I can remember. When I moved to MN from CA, people started telling me this on a near daily basis. Everyday there was a, “Whoa, lady, slow down!” Sorry – Let me adjust that for Minnesota speak. “Whooooaaaaa, lady, sloooooooow doooowwwwhnnn.” There’s an ‘h’ in there for some reason. Minnesohtahns do that. I’ve actually been hearing it less frequently these days which means I’m either slowing down, or everybody’s used to me by now. Also, there have been many times when I’ve deliberately slowed down my speaking. Most often when giving a speech or presentation, or back in the olden days when I did sales. Nobody likes a fast-talking sales person.
Why? I don’t know, I just do. For the same reason I do everything else fast. That’s just the way things are done: quickly.
Another Minnesotan (I know Beadalin is from here) and yeah - I talk way too fast. It seems to be regional.
I grew up in Kentucky, and part of my problem is any slowing down puts all that drawl right back into my voice. There is the Minnesota accent quickly - or there is a slow mid-South drawl.
When I moved her back in sixth grade, I took hell from my classmates for that drawl. Therefore its very embarrassing for me to pick it up. The other issue is that when I do pick it up, I’m often in conversations with people from the South - and it sounds like I’m making fun of them. More than once I’ve had to apologize and explain that their accent is closer to my native one than the one I speak with as an adult - and therefore it doesn’t take much to bring it out.
I would say I have a lot in common with **'mika’s **post…but would also add that I tend to think like this- link to a thread I started where I compare and contrast two books on brain function - that OP pretty much came out in a single 15-minute burst, with very few edits, if any. When my brain starts to work, taking an idea and breaking it down, imparting a structure to make sense of it and then drawing conclusions and articulating them, well - if I get in a groove, it can all come out in a rush - as I mentioned in the thread, I was stuck in a hotel room after drinking wine as a business dinner, so was primed to spout - and that is true for talking or writing. A decently-well-formed rush, but a rush nonetheless.
My colleagues at work know when to just stand back and let it happen They help me pick up the pieces afterwards and we hammer out what we need to from it…
I talk fast, because slow-talking people irritate the heck out of me, and I don’t desire to irritate anyone (not to say that I don’t irritate anyone, but at least it’s not my end).
Reading out loud, though, is quite difficult for me. It’s hard to slow down my reading enough for my mouth, and out of pure momentum I read ahead and then my mouth doesn’t keep up then I stutter and skip words and sound like the illiterates in the special class that can’t read.
As a Midwesterner by upbringing and temperament who spent 20 years in the NYC metroplex, I have adopted a workable but somewhat odd method of walking in midtown. I take longer, looser strides. It allows me to travel at a decent rate of speed, sidestep obstacles (including human obstacles), and helps ward off the tension that the typical Manhattan walk - short rapid strides, locked knees, ready to stop on a dime - implants in one’s body.
As you imply, I think the walk and the talk are related - very basic, learned choices no one really “chooses.” The rhythm of a place is important in establishing one’s relation to it, and relation helps form identity. New York=nuff said. You need - not out of necessity really, but just to be in tune with the rhythm - to turn the tension knob and swing into a machine-gun cadence.
I can imagine that walking in NY is tense for some people, but not for me. I don’t get back very often, but when I do it is energizing. I’m much more tense in a crowd of slowpokes. I have to slow down these days for my wife, who is from the sticks (Philadelphia.)
They help me pick up the pieces afterwards and we hammer out what we need to from it…