Japanese speakers talk fast to convey the same information per minute due to a lower information content per syllable.
Université de Lyon researchers recruited 59 male and female volunteers who were native speakers of English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, or Vietnamese to read 20 different texts into a recorder in their native languages.
The investigators counted all of the syllables in each of the recordings and analyzed how much meaning was packed into each of those syllables.
English, with a high information density of .91, was spoken at an average rate of 6.19 syllables per second.
Mandarin, which topped the density list at .94, was the spoken at 5.18 syllables per second.
Spanish, with a low-density .63, ripped along at 7.82 syllables per second.
Japanese, with the lowest density, .49, required 7.84 syllables per second.
Regardless of the rate recorded, all of the languages conveyed the same information content per minute of speech.
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