[amelius]

I read somewhere (on HN?) that Italians speak faster than Germans because their words contain less information, so in the end they still communicate the same amount of information per minute. Italians and Germans were used in the example because they were the two extremes.

[cgag]

Nice graph of syllables per second vs bits of information per second here:

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/09/28/why-are-...

[joycian]

What's with the bimodal distributions for German there?

[ajxs]

Is this RISC vs CISC human language philosophy?

[Talanes]

I was reading a conversation trying to work out the most information that you could fit into a one word command (the limit of the Dungeons and Dragons Command spell.) Italian was floated as the language that could be stretched the furthest, due to being able to compound verbs.

So it really depends on exactly what kind of information you are trying to package and how. Different languages compress differently.