Spaniards articulate faster than Mexicans

We analyse articulation rate and speech rate, number and duration of pauses for 22 speakers of two regional varieties of Spanish (Madrilenian vs Mexican) in three different tasks (reading, picture description and interview). Our results show that speakers from Madrid have higher articulation rate and speech rate than speakers from Mexico, but that such differences are mainly observed in spontaneous speech (picture description). Instead, the number and duration of pauses were not significantly affected by the origin of speakers. Some methodological issues are discussed in order to make legitimate inferences from this exploratory study.