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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| koba Heptaglot Senior Member AustriaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5872 days ago 118 posts - 201 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, French | Message 17 of 20 31 March 2011 at 1:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Spanish is indeed spoken faster than a lot of languages out there and that might be the reason why many Portuguese speakers, besides the huge similarity to Spanish, cannot understand what the speaker is saying most of the times. It's like a machine gun.
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5434 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 18 of 20 31 March 2011 at 6:30am | IP Logged | ||
I think Arekkusu is quite right here. The objective speed (as measured by something like syllables per minute) probably varies considerably geographically, individually and also most likely according to the circumstances. But I think the real issue here is that it is a known fact that when you don't understand a language, it always seems fast. As others have pointed out, this is because the sound seems to be a stream of continuous sounds. When you understand a language, the perception of speed changes hugely. Yes, some people are slower or faster than others but for different reasons. For example, teenagers speak faster than older adults. Comedians tend to speak really quickly. Politicians will speak in a deliberate way that is not too fast. And they can all be very understandable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5312 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 19 of 20 31 March 2011 at 6:36am | IP Logged | ||
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My native language, Cantonese, is also syllable-timed, but I'm sure Spanish and Japanese, also syllable-timed, are spoken much faster than Cantonese. When I try to parrot phrases from CDs, often I cannot say those phrases at the same speed even if I replaced all syllables with "dadada" or "lalala". ie. they say "arigatou" faster than I can say "lalalalala". My tongue has never been asked to move that fast, not even with Cantonese tongue-twisters. I can actually hear Japanese fine, I just can't say it that fast, so I don't think it's a matter of unfamiliarity with the language.
And I find German slow, even though I'm not good at it. Edited by smallwhite on 31 March 2011 at 6:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 20 of 20 31 March 2011 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||
But the Cantonese tones are like an extra phoneme in each syllable. If we think of speed in terms the amount of information passed rather than the number of syllables, it might look very different.... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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