Do they just speak faster? Do the Indian words/pronunciation flow better/faster than English does? And they are simply trying to match the cadence?

  • ActualEnglish
    3•9 months ago

    Ok, so I heard a thing a long time ago about information density in languages, and that there’s a specific amount of information conveyed per second which is pretty consistent across languages, even when the number of sounds is higher or lower.

    This is true.

    Which means that a single word in English, for instance, would convey more information than a single word in Hindi.

    I don’t think that’s the right interpretation. There are words in English that would require sentences to be made for each if conveyed in a different language. But the same is true vice-versa.

    Have a look at subtitles for movies from one language to any other. Translators struggle conveying what should be paragraph long sentences of context behind a single word for one language. Do not get me started on double speak.

    • @ilinamorato
      2•9 months ago

      Oh, interesting. I hadn’t considered that there would be variances in information density within a language, but that makes sense; “truth” is a very loaded concept that means a lot of different things in context, even though it’s only one syllable; but on the other hand “authenticity” is five syllables but carries with it a meaning that is a subset of the definition of “truth.”

      I guess that’s why subtitling is even possible in different languages; if there were languages with vastly less information density than the source language, they’d need a whole screen just for the captions.