Foreigners sure talk fast, don’t they? When you listen to someone speaking a foreign language, you’re sure they’re speaking very quickly, far faster than you speak in your more refined native language. It turns out they think exactly the same thing about the way you talk. It’s the “Gabbling Foreigner Illusion.” Speech scientists have studied it for decades. Everyone feels that foreign languages are spoken faster than their own language. There are several reasons we need extra time to process words spoken in a language that we’re learning. I’ll tell you about them below. It’s one of the...