Fiction that Matters

Künstler: Pieter Bruegel d. Ä., Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie

We’ve all known people who are deliberate, even plodding, talkers, taking their time with seemingly every word. And then there are those who spit out their sentences with barely a breath in between. Such variation among individuals is understandable (and at times even cultural), but what about among languages themselves? In other words, is Spanish in general spoken faster than English? Is English faster than Chinese? And how do we measure the speed of speech anyway? Listen as Bob Garfield and I talk about the common perception that foreign languages are spoken more rapidly than one’s own.