• Bigfish@lemmynsfw.com
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    17 days ago

    Hard to tell. Need something like “bits of information per syllable” to get at efficiency. Just eyeballing it, Vietnamese, English, and Cantonese seem most likely the most efficient.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      Cantonese and Vietnamese make sense, as they’re are both tonal languages (along with Mandarin, Thai, Punjabi, and Cherokee apparently). English wastes tones on communicating stress or question vs statement.