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Re:Ask HN: Did knowing or learning a not-so-famous natural l... by bitwize on Monday November 14, 2016 @11:35AM (#12950943)
Japanese expends a lot more syllables to say the same thing that English can say in fewer. Even more if you use the polite form (e.g., speaking in a business context, train announcements, etc.) Grandparent post was not the first person I've observed to notice this.

Japanese syllables are often shorter than English syllables, and a native speaker can articulate then quickly and fluently, but it seems to take much more linguistic "mass" to say a thing in Japanese compared to its English equivalent, unless you use a blunt direct form.

Re:Ask HN: Did knowing or learning a not-so-famous natural l... by vvillena on Monday November 14, 2016 @11:41AM (#12951004)
Yup, Japanese is a machine-gun language. Spanish, too.
Re:Ask HN: Did knowing or learning a not-so-famous natural l... by tellarin on Monday November 14, 2016 @12:04PM (#12951257)
No no no. Finish is a machine gun language. And a broken one at that. Everything sounds like ratatata ta ta. PS: Too long working for Nokia, I guess. ;)
Re:Ask HN: Did knowing or learning a not-so-famous natural l... by bitwize on Monday November 14, 2016 @12:20PM (#12951391)
Finnish and Japanese have enough in common (agglutinative, SOV word order, double consonants and vowels) that some linguists think they might be distantly related.

Listen to some spoken Japanese; you might find it sounds a lot like Finnish.