I'm not sure what this means. I do memorize phone numbers in english, albeit not very much these days due to the phone address book. But this made me contemplate whether I am memorizing the words or the numbers. When I repeat my phone number to myself, I "hear" the english words, but I "see" the numbers.
There are more authoritative sources but this is what I found: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/07/01/137527742/c...
Also, when I say them aloud or in my head, mandarin numbers are clearly shorter.
Upon further research, it seems like Vietnamese is also very information dense.
That has nothing to say, compare it to programming languages, is the language with the least LOC's the best language? No, often its a mix.
Suddenly, bandwidth decreases by 20%, downloads are 20% faster, server costs decrease 20%, data centre energy usage decreases by 20%, greenhouse gases from data centres decrease by 20%, and so global warming slows down by _% and on and on. Sure it won't be 20%, it might not be nearly that in many cases, but think about the magnitude of the rube goldberg of unknown efficiency increases you'll set off.
>Suddenly, bandwidth decreases by 20%, downloads are 20% faster
Who is thinking from a programmer perspective now? Compression is not always a good thing, and for sure not in natural language.
I have an instant reaction doubting that statement. Not because the numbers are obviously wrong in themselves or I think you made them up or the source was lying.
It implies a precision such that 1/3 s != 1/4 s. The difference is 80 ms.
To be a meaningful statement, it implies that the speed measured can be characterized to some fraction of 80 ms, and that the variance within english and mandarin speakers is also significantly smaller. I cannot conceive of that being the case.