Actually, English has a fairly high entropy/syllables ratio. [1][2] Also, given that we can infer with decent accuracy what people are saying even in noisy env

Actually, English has a fairly high entropy/syllables ratio. [1][2] Also, given that we can infer with decent accuracy what people are saying even in noisy environments, I would say it's really not too bad. You could do better of course, but in a good spoke natural language you want a good mix of density (for efficient communication) and redundancy (for dealing with environmental variables). Optimizing for one comes at the expense of the other, and English strikes a pretty decent balance. [citation needed] 1: Pellegrino, et al. University of Lyons, 2011 <http://www.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/pellegrino/Pellegrino_to%20appear_Language.pdf> http://www.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/pellegrino/Pellegri... 2: There has been some valid criticism made to [1].