Peer-reviewed research
Different languages, similar encoding efficiency: Comparable information rates across the human communicative niche
Christophe Coupé et al., Science Advances, 2019 · DOI 10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594
Read the originalRead on October 16, 2026
- What it is
- A study of 17 languages that measured how many syllables speakers say per second and how much information each syllable carries, and found the product is similar across languages.
- How much weight it carries
- Peer-reviewed in Science Advances. It measures read speech from a sample of 17 languages and cannot be applied directly to word counts, because words differ in length between languages.
Facts taken from this source
- A study of 17 languages found that they encode similar information rates, about 39 bits per second, despite large differences in speech rate and in information per syllable.
“languages encoding similar information rates (~39 bits/s) despite wide differences in each property individually” (Abstract)