stress-timed/syllable-timed language?

Question

I hear English is a stress-timed languages where as some Far East languages (Japanese and Korean) are syllable timed language.
Can anyone explain the meaning of language being "syllable-timed"?

Answer 1

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_(linguistics):
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In a syllable-timed language, every syllable is thought to take up roughly the same amount of time when pronounced, though the actual length of time of a syllable depends on situation. Spanish and French are commonly quoted as examples of syllable-timed languages. This type of rhythm was originally metaphorically referred to as 'machine-gun rhythm' because each underlying rhythmical unit is of the same duration, similar to the transient bullet noise of a machine-gun.

In a stress-timed language, syllables may last different amounts of time, but there is a constant amount of time (on average) between two consecutive stressed syllables. English, German and Dutch are typical stress timed languages. Stress-timing is sometimes called Morse-code rhythm. When spoken faster, a stress-timed language usually shortens, obscures, or drops vowels to carry more syllables between two stresses without changing its rhythm so much.
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Japanese and maybe Korean are actually mora-timed languages, which is the basic concept as syllable-timed languages, except some consonants may take up the same amount of time in a rhythym as syllables, such as the Japanese syllable-final "n."

Answer 2

Syllable Timed Language

Answer 3

The previous answer is correct in the definitions of stress-timed and syllable-timed, but there needs to be a bit more information.

The definition of stress-timed is that there is an equal amount of time between stressed syllables. English, German, and a number of related languages are supposed to be stress-timed languages. I have also heard that one of the Chinese languages and European Portuguese are stress-timed. This would be the equivalent of speaking along with a metronome, with one beat for every stressed syllable (not every syllable).

The definition of syllable-timed is that there is an equal amount of time for each syllable. French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and a number of other languages are considered to be syllable-timed. This would be the equivalent of speaking along with a metronome, with one syllable for every beat.

There is a third kind of timing called mora-timed. A mora is a part of a syllable (if you don't know about phonetics you might not be familiar with the term). In mora-timed languages, there is supposed to be an equal amount of time for each mora. An example of a language that is considered mora-timed is Japanese. A psycholinguistic study from a couple of years ago that I read also determined that Korean has the same kind of timing as Japanese, so that would mean that Korean is also mora-timed.

HOWEVER:
While people seem to be able to perceive the difference between stress-timed and syllable-timed languages, acoustic studies have verified that such differences do not actually exist, at least as those types of timing are currently defined. One study that I read about Spanish, for example, determined that the length of the syllable depends on how many sounds are in the syllable. In other words, syllables with more sounds take more time in Spanish. This goes against the definition of Spanish being a syllable-timed langauge, since syllable timing would mean that it should take the same amount of time for each syllable regardless of the number of sounds in the syllable. In fact, many languages have sort of a combination of stress timing and syllable timing at different moments.

So, while people definitely are able to perceive a difference between groups of languages, it is now clear that the lengths of syllables or length of time between syllables must not be responsible for this difference. Perhaps we are perceiving something else about the language. For example, many "syllable-timed" languages have more open syllables than many "stress-timed" languages, so we could be perceiving the syllable structure.

Answer 4

These are all very close. I think it has more to do with unconscious timing of the number of elements that are placed within an exhalation. So elements are the same from exhalation to exhalation (number of syllables, number of stresses, number of neume-groups, etc.)