Re: How many vowel lengths are there

From: Javier BF (uaxuctum_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 09/15/04 

Date: 15 Sep 2004 06:36:17 -0700

> I once had a theory that languages with few phonemes need to be spoken
> faster than languages with many, in order to obtain the same
> information density: in a language with few phonemes each of them is
> more predictable, so its actual occurrence carries fewer bits of
> information. But practical example don't support this: English,
> Hungarian and Portuguese have roughly the same number of phonemes, but
> only Portuguese sounds fast. Spanish has far fewer phonemes than
> Portuguese, but both sound very fast.

I think this is just a matter of subjective impression. To me,
real English (i.e. not the one spoken by ESL teachers in class)
has always sounded confusingly fast, with short and unstressed
syllables disappearing into nothingness; while to me Castilian
Spanish sounds at 'the normal, logical, reasonable pace, slow
enough to discern words but fast enough not to sound silly'.

Cheers,
Javier

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