Minnesotans Have The Fastest Talkers, Louisiana Has The Slowest

Have you ever been talking to someone who gets words out so quickly you can barely understand them? Or maybe you’ve been in a conversation with someone who speaks so painfully slow that you have to stop yourself from finishing their sentences for them. The thing is, people talk differently depending on where they live, and we’re not just talking about their accents, but their pace, too.

Research from Preply, an online language learning platform, reveals which U.S. states have the fastest and slowest talkers. They analyzed data from two nationwide studies based on YouTube videos and call recordings to come up with the rankings of the average speech rates of 114 cities and all 50 states.

  • The average rate of speech in all states is 5.09 syllables per second.
  • The state with the fastest average rate of speech is Minnesota, at 5.34 syllables per second.
  • The slowest average rate of speech is Louisiana, at 4.78 syllables per second.
  • Portland, Oregon, is the city with the fastest talkers, at an average of 5.38 syllables a second.
  • The city with the slowest talkers is Peoria, Illinois, at 4.71 per second.

Top 10 Fastest Talking States

  1. Minnesota
  2. Oregon
  3. Iowa
  4. Kansas
  5. North Dakota
  6. Massachusetts
  7. New Hampshire
  8. South Dakota
  9. Nebraska
  10. Vermont

10 Slowest Talking States

  1. Louisiana
  2. South Carolina
  3. Mississippi
  4. Alabama
  5. Georgia
  6. New Mexico
  7. Arkansas
  8. North Carolina
  9. Texas
  10. Illinois

Today

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