If you had to guess which state was the fastest speaking – I am willing to bet that the majority of you would say New York. New Yorkers talk a lot, are always in a hurry and they have to say what’s on their mind fast…before the train leaves, the deadline arrives or they’re onto the next thing.
However, for any of us who did answer New York to the question above – we would all be mistaken. It turns out that mild mannered Oregon is the frontrunner. Yup, not New York but Oregon. An independent researcher ‘Marchex’ examined 4,000,000 anonymous phone calls and pronounced the inhabitants of the Beaver State the fastest speakers in the nation. After Minnesota, Iowa and Massachusetts, "chatty Kathies" are more abundant in Oregon, with the quickest speech pattern of them all. On the other end are the southern states – Louisiana, Alabama and the two Carolinas. The slowest speaking state was Mississippi.
There are more facts pertinent to the story: New Yorkers use more words, in fact, 62% more. The chatty verbosity is true for most of the East Coast, where people stay on the phone long after Midwesterners put down their receivers.
They are impatient though, and unless the call is personal or involves real conversation, these people don’t stay on the phone when put on hold. 900 million hours are the average time Americans waste on hold, but New Yorkers, Kentuckians and residents of Ohio have long slammed down the phone and ran off to busy themselves with a new activity.
Conclusion drawn: If you want someone to sit and wait to have a talk with a government agent or airline rep, pick a patient Minnesotan rather than a high energy, flighty New Yorker.
You’ll get to finalize your ticket purchase and nobody will count the number of words per minute the Minnesotan will use, but despite their lower speed pattern, the New Yorker will be long gone onto new adventures.