bits in English are almost always *considerably* shorter than in any of the other (11?) languages

That is true, I've worked on the Spanish translations of U.S. textbooks (I worked on the formatting, not the language) and it is always difficult to fit the Spanish into the same space as the original English. This is true even in books for 1st through 6th grades where the language is a simple and very few "long" English words are used. We have one of the most compact languages, I believe, though I'm not sure if it is just the over-all length of the words commonly used.

By the way, that last sentence had, by my count, 88 words and used only 2 words of ten letters or more. On the other hand there were 44 words with 3 or less letters - fully 50%. We use contractions a lot - but of course in formal writing they're still a no-no.

as for real sure Arrgh! How did it happen that we stopped using "LY" so often? I'm usually not a stickler for "proper use" but so many people in the last 20 years don't even know that it's incorrect. What bothers me is the use of "fast" instead of "quickly." A car can be fast, but it doesn't "go fast" it "goes quickly."