Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second (sciencemag.org)

Article summary

Researchers calculated the information density of 17 languages and found a universal transmission rate of 39 bits per second. The study suggests that the bottleneck in human communication is not how quickly we can process information, but how quickly we can gather our thoughts. The researchers used syllable conditional entropy to estimate information density, which is measured in bits. This finding has implications for natural language understanding and translation.

Main themes

• information density
• language transmission rate
• human communication
• linguistics
• information theory

What commenters say

• The concept of bits is a valid unit of measurement for information density, applicable beyond computer science to fields like linguistics and physics. Some languages are more verbose than others, which can affect their information density and transmission rate. The verbosity of a language is inversely proportional to the speed at which it is generally spoken. The human brain can adapt to process information at faster rates, such as sped-up audio recordings, with practice and training. The idea that human speech has a universal transmission rate is supported by studies showing that spoken languages convey data at a reliable rate. Others argue that the experimental design may not support the claim of a universal transmission rate, as the same text may have different amounts of information in different languages. The use of bits to measure information density is a useful baseline, but may not capture the full complexity of human communication, which involves emotional intelligence, context, and environment.