Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced 2007–08

• There’s the Judy Grimes character played by Kristen Wiig on “Saturday Night Live,” or that guy from the 1980s who did commercials for Micro Machines and FedEx.
• Of course, there are also extremely slow talkers, like the sloth in “Zootopia” and the cartoon basset hound Droopy.

Different countries, different speeds

• SYL-LA-BLES.
• Researchers have also found that languages have different speech rates when speakers read aloud.
• French, Spanish and Japanese were shown to have high average speech rates – with close to eight syllables spoken per second.
• In English, for example, one study found that New Zealanders spoke the fastest, followed by British English speakers, then Americans and finally Australians.

Stereotypes don’t hold up

• For example, there’s the often-observed “drawl” of those living in the U.S. South.
• The term drawl denotes a slower, drawn-out speaking pace.
• One study found that participants in western North Carolina spoke more slowly than participants in Wisconsin.
• And some North Carolinians spoke about as fast as Ohioans – suggesting the stereotype of the slow-talking Southerner doesn’t always hold up.

Age, gender and other variables

• Sex and gender may also influence speech rates, although results have been conflicting here, too.
• Some research shows that men speak faster than women, while other studies find no significant difference in speech rate between genders.
• We speak slowly when we are children, speed up in adolescence and speak our fastest in our 40s.
• While geography, gender and age may affect speech rates in certain cases, context plays a role as well.
• There is no inherent connection between the rate of speech and levels of intelligence, truthfulness or kindness.