>Now I am wondering how French language stands, in terms of how fast or slow the natives talk. Probably later this fall I will start dedicating even more time to French and wonder how long it will take me to be proficient in understanding the natives and expression myself more or less coherently.

Fast in what sense? How was this measured?

I can imagine three speeds, at least

- number of syllables per minute (pretty similar to typing speed in characters per minute)

- number of words per minute

- amount of actual information per minute

In my own language the speed may differ between areas - I'm in a slow speaking area, those from far south are sometimes almost incomprehensible to me, I often have to replay in my head to understand what they said. But there are some areas nearby, where I thought the guy was stupid - but no, he's just speaking far slower than we here, as is customary in his village.

I confess I'm biased towards the third measure, as the number of words means nothing, or misleads at least. Spanish and other article-ridden languages, with little morphology but lots of articles and mandatory pronouns will have many more words where morphology rich languages will have those implied, will allow lots of word omissions.

But then how can they measure that without bias?