It takes X seconds for the average English user to send an average-length text message via phone.
What language is the most effort-intensive to text? How about to write? Is there one language that is best adapted to "the keyboard" or the touchpad or other means of technologically-assisted expression?
Sounds like a great research opportunity!
No matter how orthographically long a language may be, one can assume that if you're texting it, there will be a shortened/abbreviated version of it. I mean, who really texts in English? I don't. I use
There are estimates for text expansion/contraction in translation to give you an idea of how languages compare typographically. I don't know where these numbers come from, but they're on a zillion translation companies' websites, and they seem pretty accurate to me.
So -- let's look at French, a language that I happen to have stumbled on some cool texting information about. French text expansion is about 15-20% -- that is, it takes 15-20% more space to write the same thing that English does. But just like in English, French speakers have abbreviated their way to the shortest SMS conversation possible using
EDIT: Add into the mix that there are a number of ways to text these days with the variety of phones available: keypad, sliding qwerty keyboard, touchscreen qwerty, swipe texting. And other factors like T9 and autocorrect. /END EDIT
As far as the best language for "the keyboard": My guess would be English since that's the language it was designed for. Of course there actually exist many different keyboard layouts to rival the standard QWERTY arrangement, most notably for English the Dvorak keyboard.
Changing your computer's keyboard layout can make it really easy to type almost any language. Maybe the same way perceived speech speed varies with informational content of lexemes, languages using "native" or adapted electronic input methods could probably type at the same speed as we can in English. Srsly, have u ever seen some1 type in ZH??
Any language that is using a character per word is sending a much higher quantity of information per symbol. I'm envious of how much the Japanese and Chinese speakers in my twitter stream can pack into 140 characters.
On the otherhand, I learned to type in a single semester in Highschool and learned to read in probably a years worth of instruction. Chinese and Japanese writing on the other hand is a life long task of acquisition and maintenance that requires daily practice to remain good at using it.
Good question. The answer is going to depend hugely on several factors:
1a. Are we texting textspeak, or is it grammatically correct, punctuated, capitalized (and for foreign languages, accented) sentences (which imply lots of extra keystrokes, modifier keys, possible error and correction keystrokes)? Or something <100% proper spelling? What character error rate is considered acceptable? Is this an email to the boss, or just chat or directions? Must German nouns be capitalized or French past tenses accented? (We can predictively learn and add those, from a lexicon. We can also learn the proper nouns you use and add them to lexicon. We could even infer the first and last name of the message recipient - how much use of message 'context' is allowed, exactly?)
1b. Can we use predictive text? like the world-record-smashing Swiftkey X (And are there yet any speaker-specific-entrained predictive text systems?) For textspeak, we could expand hlo, l8r, LMAO, BRB, 'I <3 U' (or the French textspeak mentioned below). Do those common abbreviations give English o romanized languages an unfair advantage? The current world record (and English-language) is 160 characters/26 words in 10.7 sec, without errors, by Rachael Loncar, as of 10/2011. Predictive text can make you >2x faster.
2 Is there one language that is best adapted to "the keyboard"
2a. You know that there are alternatives to QWERTY, right? And most of these improve the typing speed for both English- and non-English-language users. QWERTY is only fast because we grew up with it, no other reason. QWERTY discriminates against non-English users.
2b. Did you mean 'thumb keyboard' as distinct to 'touchscreen'?
2c. Texting speed will depend on the size ratio between your fingers and the keyboard. There are gender and racial differences on this.
2d. My friend points out that Europeans and Asians are in general faster at texting than Americans, simply because they get more practise, since in the US cellphone calls are free (assuming a monthly contract). Whereas many Americans, if they text at all, tend to text when they're in a meeting or unable to pick up, or e.g. if they know you are / or are driving.
My point is, all these factors will prevent you from making a language-neutral comparison.
I think that the longest sentences are for example in Finno-Ugric and Eskimo-Aleut languages, like Finnish, Estonian or Inuktitut. I think they are agglutinative languages but I think it might take some minutes to type something.
