• Valmond@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Yeah like “qu’est-ce que c’est ?” Which is just “what’s that?” (I speak both too) would never have guessed French had more information encoded, french translations are always longer too (but you don’t always pronounce all ofc).

    • kmaismith@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      I think this moreso demonstrates how tedious written french is. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” is significantly faster to say than “what’s that?”

      I’d wager if the chart was on information density per written letter or word french would be way further behind

        • thrawn@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Yeah, I could also see there being variability between dialects and how much they respectively pronounce in a word. “What’s that?” could easily become “waz-at?” which is much quicker to say.