Quick on the drawl

Study suggests Arkansans, Texans among nation’s slowest talkers

TEXARKANA — It seems there is something to that Southern drawl after all.

In a report published last week, the language-learning platform Preply ranked Arkansas and Texas in the top 10 of the slowest-talking states in the nation.

The Natural State came in seventh, with Arkansans averaging 4.93 syllables per second. Texans are marginally faster (4.95 syllables per second) to rank ninth, according to the report.

The slowest in the nation was Louisiana. Residents of the Pelican State speak on average 4.78 syllables per second.

Minnesotans were the fastest talkers on the the list, averaging about 5.34 syllables a second.

The average speech rate in the U.S. is 5.09 syllables per second, Preply states in the report.

“The difference isn’t huge, but it is noticeable. Preply determined that for every five words uttered by a person in a slow-talking state, a person in a fasttalking one can get out six,” according to the report.

Angie Vaughn, of Texarkana, said there is some truth to Preply’s findings. The Dallas said her Southern accent is a topic of conversation when she visits relatives in Arizona.

“We have a drawl, and they think it’s funny,” Vaughn said Sunday afternoon as she spent time with her family at Spring Lake Park.

Vaughn said her Arizona kin often ask her to “repeat stuff that has the accent” just for laughs.

Rolando Varela, who moved from Chicago to De Queen, Arkansas, about nine years ago, said people in the area speak noticeably slower than in Illinois, which ranked as the 10th slowest-speaking state.

“Yes, it’s different,” he said, adding the speech differences can make it a challenge

to converse with others.

Texarkana area native Joshua Hurd said his speech rate has never raised an eyebrow or caused a chuckle in his conversations as he traveled the country.

“They just say I have a Southern accent like,” Hurd said. “That’s usually what I get a lot.”

Hurd, who spoke as he watched his children on the playground at Spring Lake Park, said no one in other parts of the country have ever told him he speaks slowly.

“It’s just, ‘It sounds different, like down-home,” he said.

Another parkgoer, who asked not to be identified, said syrupy speech has created a typecast.

“They’re probably too polite,” she said of how people in Arkansas and Texas. “They address people as sir, ma’am. Other parts of the country probably would not.”

Her teenage son was more to the point about his conversations with people from other places.

“They just say I talk a lot different, but they don’t really say too much about it,” he said.

For its report, Preply analyzed two nationally conducted studies. The first was a 2020 study by Dr. Steven Coats that analyzed caption files from YouTube videos. The second study was a Marchex Call DNA Technology analysis on speech rate on more than 4 million phone calls.

Other key findings of the report:

• The Southeast and the Southwest are the only U.S. regions not included among the states with the fastest speakers, aligning with the characterization of Southerners as slow talkers.

• Although many think of New Yorkers as motormouths who talk at lightning speed, research suggests this is not the case. Instead, New York residents speak the most, not the fastest.

The report adds to understanding the demographics of the nation, said Amy Pritchett, a language science and data analyst at Preply.

“The words people use say a lot about where they come from. We also found the speed and cadence of words reveal where you live,” she said.

The full Preply report is available online.