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How is 5.6 "more or less identical amount of information" as 3.8? That's a 47% difference!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe that is in line with their findings. Since Japanese has more syllables than any other tested language (where nearly every other letter is a vowel) it would make sense that a faster rate of unknown syllables flying by would result in the perception of faster speech. It's interesting that while the Japanese have such a focus on efficiency, their spoken and written language is potentially more contrary to this…
> Since Japanese has more syllables than any other tested language The article claims less information is encoded in each syllable, not more (as would be expected if more syllables were available). The Japanese syllabaric alphabets (hiragana and katakana) are larger than the roman alphabet, but the smaller alphabet doesn't mean that Japanese has more syllables than English. English syllables are written using multipl…
One thing the article doesn't mention but the paper goes into is the syllabic complexity. Vietnamese and Chinese both have a ridiculous amount of tones (from a Western perspective). From the paper:
Language Syllable Set Weighted Syllabic Complexity
English 7,931 2.48
French 5,646 2.21
German 4,207 2.68
Italian 2,719 2.30
Japanese 416 1.93
Mandarin 1,191 3.58
Spanish 1,593 2.4
From my experience with Japanese, it seems like it has evolved to compensate for the low density:
A lot of the pronouns (I/he/she) tend to be dropped and assumed from context
Some verb forms take the place of longer phrases: taberu koto ga dekimasu->taberaremasu
In spoken/casual usage, many phrases are shortened: oiteoite -> oitoite, my personal favorites are the arigato gozaimasu-> mumble-zaimasu or the irrashaimase->mumble-mase
Hm, .91 'information per syllable' for English at an average rate of 6.19 syllables per second are 5.6 'information' per second vs. .49 * 7.84 = 3.8 for Spanish. How is 5.6 "more or less identical amount of information" as 3.8? That's a 47% difference!
First the article claims that 1 is set arbitrarily to Vietnamese for the value of information density. There are many common ways to normalize measurements, it is obviously not 1/SPSvietnamese for this case. There are most likely other considered factors in the information density calculation (whose unit we don't actually know btw... but it is presented as a ratio otherwise they wouldn't normalize to 1), or they could just be doing some other statistical funging.
Second: With a little bit of thinking you could realize that you aren't getting a good scientifically sound write-up from the Time article -- mostly because this is how they present things (consumable for the masses!). The article writer could be picking completely arbitrary measures as important for people to puzzle over and say "Wow!" at and ignoring the real results. It has happened countless times in the past and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.
Basically what I am saying: if you want to do the incredulous thing, please put some thought in first.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe that is in line with their findings. Since Japanese has more syllables than any other tested language (where nearly every other letter is a vowel) it would make sense that a faster rate of unknown syllables flying by would result in the perception of faster speech. It's interesting that while the Japanese have such a focus on efficiency, their spoken and written language is potentially more contrary to this…
> Since Japanese has more syllables than any other tested language The article claims less information is encoded in each syllable, not more (as would be expected if more syllables were available). The Japanese syllabaric alphabets (hiragana and katakana) are larger than the roman alphabet, but the smaller alphabet doesn't mean that Japanese has more syllables than English. English syllables are written using multipl…
Less information is space x and equal time to convey information = seemingly faster speech. Fairly intuitive.
This article pretty much confirms a suspicion of mine that I've had for a while: strongly syllabic languages like Spanish, Japanese and Tagalog, with their paltry use of consonant clusters, speak/sound faster because (1) scarcity of consonant clusters without tones means that words require more syllables to be uniquely identifiable, and (2) sounds flow more easily when there is a vowel between every consonant. Unlike…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Since Japanese has more syllables than any other tested language The article claims less information is encoded in each syllable, not more (as would be expected if more syllables were available). The Japanese syllabaric alphabets (hiragana and katakana) are larger than the roman alphabet, but the smaller alphabet doesn't mean that Japanese has more syllables than English. English syllables are written using multipl…
So basically, it's bus width vs. clock rate. Although it looks like there is a natural upper bound on throughput. One thing the article doesn't mention but the paper goes into is the syllabic complexity. Vietnamese and Chinese both have a ridiculous amount of tones (from a Western perspective). From the paper: Language Syllable Set Weighted Syllabic Complexity English 7,931 2.48 French 5,646 2.21 German 4,207 2.68 It…
You'd expect that a language with greater information density would lead to higher rates of transmission error but people here don't seem to have any more trouble understanding each other on the phone or in noisy environments than we do in English.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe that is in line with their findings. Since Japanese has more syllables than any other tested language (where nearly every other letter is a vowel) it would make sense that a faster rate of unknown syllables flying by would result in the perception of faster speech. It's interesting that while the Japanese have such a focus on efficiency, their spoken and written language is potentially more contrary to this…
> Since Japanese has more syllables than any other tested language The article claims less information is encoded in each syllable, not more (as would be expected if more syllables were available). The Japanese syllabaric alphabets (hiragana and katakana) are larger than the roman alphabet, but the smaller alphabet doesn't mean that Japanese has more syllables than English. English syllables are written using multipl…
This is true in probably ~99% of cases, but not all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So basically, it's bus width vs. clock rate. Although it looks like there is a natural upper bound on throughput. One thing the article doesn't mention but the paper goes into is the syllabic complexity. Vietnamese and Chinese both have a ridiculous amount of tones (from a Western perspective). From the paper: Language Syllable Set Weighted Syllabic Complexity English 7,931 2.48 French 5,646 2.21 German 4,207 2.68 It…
Oitoite comes from oite oku I believe. To put, and leave something in place.
Maybe a better example of ~teoite->~toite shortening is aketeoite (proper, 6 syllables), meaning open it (for some future purpose) -> aketoite (spoken/casual, 5 syllables)?