[kremonte]

Important to note, however, that spoken language information density (per syllable) and syllabic rate are strongly inversely correlated [1]; languages such as Mandarin with lots of information contained in each syllable tend to be spoken slower than languages like Spanish, which uses many more syllables to convey the same amount of information, but in a similar amount of time.

So, the compactness really is more just on the writing side.

[1] "A cross-language perspective on speech information rate" https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/16e6/43a9e39674c58acd7cdf56...