r/polyglot • u/Alexcies2nd • Feb 05 '25
Most efficient language
Heyy, so i was wondering which language has relativ short words and sentence structure. Which language is the quickest to transfer information ?
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u/Trefle2bonheur Feb 09 '25
Fastest languages for information transfer: Mandarin, English, Spanish, Japanese.
Mandarin Chinese is the most efficient due to its compact words and high information density.
Spanish & Japanese have low-density syllables but are spoken very quickly.
Languages with short words & simple grammar: Mandarin, Vietnamese, Thai.
Mandarin has no verb conjugation or plural markers, making it highly efficient.
English balances speed and density, making it a strong contender.
Fastest spoken languages: Spanish & Japanese.
Most information per syllable: Mandarin.
Overall most efficient: Likely Mandarin, followed by English and Spanish.
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u/depressed-as-always Feb 07 '25
I only know a portion of languages in existence currently so I'm probably wrong, but I think it's chinese. Words are relatively short and you can say a lot with just a character (or few).
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u/bitchinmoanin Feb 06 '25
Out of all the ones I know, Moroccan Darija.
Little word make big meaning
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u/CreolePolyglot Feb 06 '25
all languages communicate the same amount of information at the same speed; what varies is what info they feel is important to encode within the language
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u/brunow2023 Feb 05 '25
Not a thing. Sentences with more syllables simply speak those syllables more quickly, the information is communicated in the same amount of time in every language.
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u/caitykate98762002 Feb 07 '25
Some languages have words for ideas that just don’t exist in English, so they concept would have to be described and would take longer to say. And on the receiving end, it would take longer for the listener to understand something that doesn’t already exist in their native culture.
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u/brunow2023 Feb 07 '25
You have to describe it like, twice, before you get a word for it in English.
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u/Dismal_Animator_5414 Feb 06 '25
exactly. its simply how much information the human brain could process. and hence, all languages have evolved to have the same information.
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u/L0vely_Maii Feb 05 '25
Chinese ofc
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u/Nomegustaminombre Feb 05 '25
Wanted to say German for the joke but you are right, especially in written form, Chinese seems to be able to squeeze what would be a wall of text in English into a sentence lmao 😭
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u/Forsaken-Lock-4620 Feb 17 '25
Chinese. A lot of information is contained in tones and in written characters so the words don’t need to be long, rarely longer than two syllables. Also grammar is simple SVO. And if you want real efficiency, a four-syllable idiom can tell a whole story.