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submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by someguy3@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

Do they just speak faster? Do the Indian words/pronunciation flow better/faster than English does? And they are simply trying to match the cadence?

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[-] actual_patience@programming.dev 3 points 8 months ago

Ok, so I heard a thing a long time ago about information density in languages, and that there's a specific amount of information conveyed per second which is pretty consistent across languages, even when the number of sounds is higher or lower.

This is true.

Which means that a single word in English, for instance, would convey more information than a single word in Hindi.

I don't think that's the right interpretation. There are words in English that would require sentences to be made for each if conveyed in a different language. But the same is true vice-versa.

Have a look at subtitles for movies from one language to any other. Translators struggle conveying what should be paragraph long sentences of context behind a single word for one language. Do not get me started on double speak.

[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Oh, interesting. I hadn't considered that there would be variances in information density within a language, but that makes sense; "truth" is a very loaded concept that means a lot of different things in context, even though it's only one syllable; but on the other hand "authenticity" is five syllables but carries with it a meaning that is a subset of the definition of "truth."

I guess that's why subtitling is even possible in different languages; if there were languages with vastly less information density than the source language, they'd need a whole screen just for the captions.

this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
216 points (100.0% liked)

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