Talking, Fast and Slow

Whilst living in New Jersey for some five months, almost twenty years ago, I was accused by a New Jerseyite—I choose that term deliberately over New Jerseyan—of “slow Midwestern answering.” At that time, I took this comment to be slightly insulting, for lack of a better adjective. Ten years later, I moved back to Ohio (hio, io...) from The Commonwealth*. I noticed that everyone seemed to be speaking  s l  o   w    l    y....

It reminded me of the time I had returned home—having been in Amsterdam for a week—coffee, stateside, tasted like water—including the swill they serve at the place named for the character in that long-winded book about the whale.

The Atlantic once published an article concerning a study of regional speech rates performed by a so-called “conversational analytics” company. According to that piece, here is the ranking of states, from fastest-talking to slowest:

1. Oregon
2. Minnesota
3. Massachusetts
4. Kansas
5. Iowa
6. Vermont
7. Alaska
8. South Dakota
9. New Hampshire
10. Nebraska
11. Connecticut
12. North Dakota
13. Washington
14. Wisconsin
15. Rhode Island
16. Idaho
17. Florida
18. Pennsylvania
19. New Jersey
20. West Virginia
21. Maine
22. Colorado
23. California
24. Missouri
25. Montana
26. Indiana
27. Hawaii
28. Virginia
29. Nevada
30. Arizona
31. Utah
32. Michigan
33. Tennessee
34. Maryland
35. Oklahoma
36. Wyoming
37. Delaware
38. New York
39. Kentucky
40. Illinois
41. Ohio
42. Arkansas
43. Georgia
44. Texas
45. New Mexico
46. North Carolina
47. Alabama
48. South Carolina
49. Louisiana
50. Mississippi

The states highlighted above are those where I have lived and/or spent enough time with natives from said state to have noticed how quickly or slowly people from that state tend to speak. Overall, the article seems accurate to me. Furthermore, when people move from one state to the other, they modify their rate of speech accordingly.

I am a bit curious as to where D.C. ranks, and incurious enough to bother researching it. New York is an interesting case, in that while some of us may think of it as synonymous with New York City, most of the state tends to be slow-speaking, much like most of Ohio and Pennsylvania (except Philadelphia). It seems odd to me that West Virginia is so high on the list, and New Jersey so low. It might also be interesting to see whether there is any correlation between the speech rates for the native languages of the predominant ethnic groups in each state and the English speech rates of the present-day inhabitants. For example, do speakers of German speak more quickly than speakers of  French? What about speakers of Spanish, Greek, Swahili, Mandarin, Gaelic, Marathi, or Italian? Are the rates of speech of these languages reflected in the states where people are predominantly from those linguistic backgrounds?

I have come to think of rate-of-speech as just one element of the normal code-switching that most self-aware speakers do almost subconsciously. I tend to speak more slowly in Ohio than I do when visiting Massachusetts; my accent also changes slightly. Similarly, I sometimes modify my vocabulary when speaking to a non-native speaker of English.

As an interesting counterpoint to the idea of speaking “too slowly,” Fred Rogers was known for advocating a slow, deliberate approach to speech so that children (his main target audience) could better comprehend his message.