What languages / nationalities have the fastest speakers?

Whenever I hear people speak in another language, it appears to me that they are talking incredibly fast. I don’t know why it sounds that way, but it is probably due to the fact that I cannot tell where the words begin or end, and not becuase they are actually talking faster. This made me wonder, however, if some nationalities or languages do actually have faster or slower speakers.

The best metric for talking speed across languages is neither syllables per minute nor words per minute, but the amount of time that it takes to convey the same information. A really precise measurement is going to be hard, but those Flutherite who have had experience in foreign cultures can probably make a good judgement.

I realize that there can be variation inside of single countries, so you can specify any group of people.