4 ms·
The language you speak changes how informative you can be
- ColinWright 7y agoThis discussion is probably relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20880789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20880789
- pdonis 7y agoThe title of the article seems misleading: the actual point of the article is that all languages convey information at basically the same rate, because variations in information density are cancelled out by variations in speech rate.
- smitty1e 7y agoIt would be interesting to consider word length, as well. Longer words would seem to convey more information.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pdonis 7y agoBut you can speak fewer of them in a given time, so the rate of information exchange would still be basically the same. The paper does consider the number of available phonemes and syllables in different languages, which presents a tradeoff along the same lines.
- smitty1e 7y agoSure, available phonemes. But that seems indirectly related at best to the number of phonemes per word, and the number of words. Simply put: is there more information per page of a romance novel than a textbook? The former is going to be closer to common speech. Or, if somebody speaks like a textbook, they may lack an audience. But does Mr. Textbook convey more information?
- pdonis 7y ago> that seems indirectly related at best to the number of phonemes per word, and the number of words. I wasn't saying they were the same, just that the tradeoff presented was similar. > is there more information per page of a romance novel than a textbook? I don't think these are even comparable since they are written for different purposes. But in any case this comparison is not the kind of comparison the article is talking about.
- smitty1e 7y agoNot the first time I have completely misunderstood the question, then.