The speed of talking

What, do you think, are the main things that control the rate (how slowly or fast) somebody speaks? I think it's interesting to hypothesize. Slower speech is often attributed to and associated with a more relaxed pace of life, or sometimes laziness, but sometimes fast mumbling is due to being too lazy to speak properly.

Some languages and accents seem faster than others: Spanish and Italian and say certain English accents. English seems on the slow side, would you not agree? Do you think speaking a fast language might make one's brain start to work faster?

Also, why do women tend to speak faster (at least here in Oz, less so in other places)? Because they gossip more?

I just realized how this is kind of an ignored aspect of speech and language.

<<Slower speech is often attributed to and associated with a more relaxed pace of life, or sometimes laziness, >>


Not always, some people speak slowly because they weigh their words carefully before speaking.

I once heard a southern lady say (with some disgust), "Just because I talk slow doesn't mean I think slow."

I don't think being a motormouth has too much to do with how much horsepower is in your head. A lot of people who natter on endlessly are as vapid as can be. Stephen Hawking can't talk at all. Neither can Roger Ebert. So what they put out in writing or through a computer synthesizer is the careful distillation of their thoughts, and is no less erudite for requiring a laborious process to produce.

I think speech habits are a product of your environment and your personality -- if you grow up in a region where people talk fast, you'll learn that custom, too. If you grow up where people don't open their mouths unless they really have something to say and verbal diarrhea is frown upon, you'll refrain, as well. People also talk faster when they are nervous, excited, or lying to you, which often means their mouth is moving faster than their brain.

Lol. Good observations, Uriel.

Btw, some of the threads are blocked at antimoon. Anyone having the same problem. Debug.

Usually people who speak fast do so because they're worried that they might quickly lose their listener's attention. So you can usually tell who is insecure about themselves just listening to the way they talk.