--- Forwarded Message from "David Pankratz" <[log in to unmask]> --- >Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 10:46:15 -0600 >From: "David Pankratz" <[log in to unmask]> >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: #5382.3 WPM Across Languages (!) Oh boy, Ursula, you really opened a can of worms with this one, but I know that you like that... <grin> My linguistics-oriented ponderings, now somewhat sluggish, tell me that it really gets dicey when one starts talking about "words" across languages, as you already suspected. You mentioned "syntactical units", and then the concept of morphemes comes up, which are often thought of as "little units of meaning," but this doesn't always work either. (What is the "ras" is rasberry?) I began wondering if maybe the best way to measure speed would be to do it by measuring "syllables", i.e., units of sound, but then again, syllables may be longer or shorter in some languages depending upon the range of sounds available to that language. There seems to be do doubt that when comparing speakers of a single language, speed varies quite a bit. Living in Chicago has sped up my English, as my old friends in Colorado are quick to point out. And I don't think anyone would deny that New York city residents should win some prizes in this category. And to take this discussion really adrift, a friend of mine has software designed to slow down music _without_ changing the pitch, which may be of interest to us with regard to slowing down language recordings without making them sound like the speaker is sedated... As always, thanks for the interesting question. David Pankratz Loyola University Chicago