I was wondering in what language it is fastest to communicate in. For example someone talking in Chinese could say a full sentence in 3 syllables but in English it would take much longer. Does anyone have any idea which language is fastest? 
-nifu
See this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=74126
I highly doubt that any language is any more linguistically efficient than any other. While it’s true that most (Mandarin) Chinese words are made of 1 to 3 syllables, there are also some rather awkward constructions that increase sentence length.
Compare these two equivalent sentences:
That girl I invited to dinner is French (11 syllables).
Wo qing chi wanfan de na ge nuhaizi shi faguoren. (15 syllables).
(Literally: I - asked - to eat - dinner - (particle) that (measure word) - girl - is - french).
That means that for detailed concepts, Chinese becomes as wordy as English, or any other languages. I don’t mean to denigrate any language, as I find them all beautiful and infinitely interesting, but each language has certain constructions that are quick and convenient, and others that are more irritating. I suppose it all equals out in the end.
English (three syllables, one full sentence, interrogative): What is that?
Japanese (three syllables, one full sentence, interrogative, same meaning as the English sentence above): Nan desu ka? {The desu is actually pronounced as des, thus desu ka sounds like deska.}
English: What?
Japanese: Nani?
Korean: Mo?
German: Was?
etc.
It all depends on what you’re trying to say.
I left out:
Korean: Uhdika? (2 syllables)
English: Where are you going? (5 syllables)
i dont know about efficiency as far as syllable count, but as far as amount of thinking required to correctly phrase a thought - i think english is a very simple language compared to russian for example. and the way english is mutating with this ebonics crap, it is only going to get simpler.
I’m going to nominate Latin for discussion. It seemed from Latin class that the Latin version of any sentence was always half as long as the English equvalent, on average.
Of course, I speak… one language, and took only two in school, neither of which I can command well enough to speak.
Wow. I think it not only depends on what you’re trying to say but also in what variety of a language you’re trying to say it and to whom you’re speaking.
English: “How are you doing?” versus “What’s up?” versus “'sup?”
English: “I agree” verus “Word”
Japanese: “Soo desu nee” verus “Soo nee” or “nee” = really
Japanese: “Sore wa sumimasen deshita” versus “Gomen” = I’m so very sorry for what I’ve done versus “I’m sorry”
Japanese gets even trickier when you get into contractions so I’m going to let those alone.
French: “Tu m’excuse, sil vous plait”* versus “Pardon”
*Okay, this French example’s not correct. I’m trying to reconstruct what a French lady said to me when she bumped me accidentally. If I understood her correctly, she was saying: “I ask/beg? that you please excuse me. I didn’t mean to bump into you.” But, I don’t know how to say that in French. Je ne parle pa le francais.
[celestina tiptoes out of this thread.]
:o “Soo desu nee” doesn’t mean “really.” It means: “It’s so.” Nee is a sentence particle that expresses admiration or surprise. In Japanese “really” = “Soo desu ka.”
Ihave a soft spot for Solresol, http://www.ptialaska.net/~srice/solresol/intro.htm
a syllabary/musical language which allows you to say two things at once…
one spoken. and one sung… like some chinese words, the ‘tune’ changes the sense of the words ,but it is possible to transmit two messages at once- even to give both sides of an argument simultaneously.
I’d nominate any sign language…
Auslan (Australian Sign Language) is the only one I’m at all familiar with (and I’m certainly not fluent) but it seems to have remarkable economy of word usage.
Also, the “compact” (I don’t know the correct term) form of braille, although that isn’t a spoken language per se.
In our newsroom software, you can set the average words-per-minute rate, to more accurately time the bulletins.
The rate for English is 3 words a second.
The rate for Arabic is 2 words a second.
“chi wan fan de nu hai zi shi fa guo ren”
11 Syllables.
you could skip the “na ge” and probably skip the “wo”.
Shalmanese, you’re saying the “the girl eating dinner is French”
My experience is that when passing that bizzare hat wearing old man in the left lane of the New Jersey Turnpike, who has been driving at 56 miles an hour all day, and pacing evenly with the car next to him for the last 20 miles, ignoring you flashing your headlights, etc. Everything negative thing you feel about him, and his freaky feather-laden hat wearing, Buick-driving, body-function obsessed ass; can be reduced to one simple finger gesture.
I think there could be two answers to this question, perhaps more. One thing is how many syllables (or words) you need to say a sentence, while the other is how fast the typical native speaker can say it. Spanish may seem lengthy in some phrases compared to English, but a native speaker may say it faster than a native English speaker says the same phrase. Also, many people create shortcuts and contractions while speaking, minimizing the total number of sounds said.
I work as a translator. If you properly translate English into Lithuanian, the Lithuanian text is longer and vice versa, if you translate Lithuanian into English, the English is longer. If you translate English-Lithuanian-English, the second English text will be the longest. I don’t know that any further translation would increase that. The problem is that each language has its own subtlities. For example, English has the word, ‘meek’. In order to fully translate that word into Lithuanian, you need two words, ‘gentle and quiet’ Now the person translating back into English won’t know whether ‘gentle and quiet’ is meant or ‘meek’.
Then you have participle use (same as in Latin) where Lithuanian puts the verb in a participle or gerund form, for ex. ‘valgus maistus’ i.e. ‘after [he] ate the food’. This would be properly reduced upon retranslation but translations end up with a lot more 'after’s than English generally uses. A proper English text has much more convoluted syntax than Lithuanian so they often have to break it down into a couple of sentences. Lithuanians write stringy sentences since they have endings that help identify the antecedent, which makes for very formal sentences in English (of which sentences…) or breaking them into two or more sentences.
As to words, if you take the original Lithuanian language, talking about farm life, you can speak volumes with only a few short words because the words have very precise meanings (like meek above). If you take modern Lithuanian talking about business, the words are very long and often correspond to the English words they have been taken from, if you know the equivalent (this can get tricky while the dictionaries catch up). Thus the sentences are very long. The same will be true of any language pairs you care to name. Thus the sentence above about the French girl is misleading because it is being translated. Try putting a chinese thought into English and see how long the sentence is.
I’d vote for shorthand, if it were considered a language…then sign language.
Has anyone mentioned Eskimo? IIRC, they can have a one-word sentence…
::hides in corner::
Crud! I miscounted above for my example in Korean! It’s 3 syllables.
handy: Which Sign Language?