HN user

e2daipi

9 karma
Posts3
Comments15
View on HN

I believe that you are referring to this[0] study. It has since been published (2011), though it's not openly accessible.

Page 8 of a presentation by the author[1] shows that out of 7 languages (Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, German, English, and Mandarin) English is the second most information dense language, Mandarin being the most. Spanish is characterised by a fast rate of low-density syllables.

A Spanish to English comparison (eye-balling) would be that Spanish is spoken at a rate of 7.8 syllables per second vs 6.2 for English (≈ 22.9% faster). (Spanish compared as a lot of comments are referencing its simplicity)

English, compared in the referenced study, achieves the highest information rate, is spoken at a moderate-slow speed with a high information density.

[0] http://www.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/pellegrino/pellegri... [1] http://neukom.dartmouth.edu/docs/pellegrino-presentation-dar...

>> it seems reasonable to assume that people who bothered getting your app in the first place are most likely the people who spend more time on your website

This is a HTML5 [web] app.

I believe that you are correct in what you posit, but it is not applicable here.

> "On our example, this doesn’t work because we are going from the United States to England and the English Pound is worth more than the US dollar. Additionally, the Iceland Krona is not worth less than a dollar. However, if we were going the reverse way, this would work."

Not quite. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage

I think the way you are looking at it could cost you a bit of money if you are not careful.

This study was about syllables, not characters vs symbols.

Example:

Japanese for mouth 口 = 1 "character" English = 5 charachters

The syllables are irrelevant, though above they match; twitter care about characters.

Also note the:

> "Slightly related"

"You hear a lot about “quality time” being valuable, but I think quality attention is invaluable. Giving someone your attention is giving more than just giving your time."

These, to me, are disparate sentences. Quality time[1] and time are not the same. The second sentence is fine, in it's own right; but the first, comparing the same thing and asserting a difference?

One site comment, "Life changing!". Yup, was for me too…

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_time