If we combined our words together, how long would they last in a 24 hour period? I’ve heard that the average person only speaks a combined 10 minutes per day. True or false?
False.
Cite?
Well, people working phones (telemarketers, customer service, etc.) probably bring up the average.
Or you could say that they are, in fact, not average.
Here are the results of one study which may lend assistance to us in our hour of need.
It attempts to assign a sexual word budget to males and females for purposes of comparison i.e. which sex is most loquacious. A sample of 153 demographically balanced speakers were wired up with recording facilities for two days and the results eagerly dissected.
Zipping down to the bottom of the link, the inferred totals given (allowing for various linguistic transactions contributed by others not part of the trial) are 6,073 words per day spoken by men and 8,805 spoken by women. The average is therefore 7,439 words per day across the sexes. According to the study.
The average number of words spoken per minute in conversation mode is 200-300. (Other modes of speaking will be carried out at a lower rate.) If you divide 7,439 by (say) 250 you get an answer of 29.75 minutes, or 29 minutes 45 seconds, this being the shortest period of time in which the average person could speak his/her daily average of words in one seemingly interminable monologue.
Interestingly, it may be noted that men can use up their daily average in 24 minutes 17 seconds whereas women will take 35 minutes and 13 seconds to fulfil their quota based on these figures.