Comparing communication efficiency across languages In response to last week's post on comparative vocabulary size (" Ask Language Log: Comparing the vocabularies of different languages ", 3/31/2008), a number of readers sent observations about a related but different topic, namely the comparative efficiency of communication. At least as measured by crude metrics such as bit counts, there are differences among languages that are not easy to explain. Alex Baumans described a bilingual magazine's problems in equalizing space and word-count allocations between Dutch and French: I read your discussion about the proportion of words of a language that is actually in use. A very thought provoking piece. My view is that any attempt to compare languages will fail, if the word formation rules of the languages differ too much. I work as a journalist for a HVAC magazine in Belgium. As Belgium is bilingual, out publication exists in parallel Dutch and French versions.…