I notice Indians speaking English tend to speak very fast. Are the Indian languages simply spoken faster?
Do they just speak faster? Do the Indian words/pronunciation flow better/faster than English does? And they are simply trying to match the cadence?
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well correction English has 20 vowels, depending on dialect
Vowel has 2 definitions that conflict.
One definition is the letters 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', and 'u' (and sometimes 'y'). The other is the speech sound without any blockage or constricting of the vocal tract. Vowel letters are used in written English to indicate vowel sounds, but because English is a pain in the ass, there's no 1 to 1 match between the 5(ish) vowel letters and the 20+ vowel sounds.
As I said I don't know much about the topic, I presented my thoughts.
I think the guy you responded to was making a joke about how some native English speakers talk
No, they were pointing out that, even though English doesn't use a separate symbol for each phonemic vowel sound, there are 20 distinct vowel phonemes in the language.
If we gave each its own letter, there would be 20 lettered vowels in English. Which would probably make English easier to learn.
This is why "bay," "bat," and "bar" have completely different vowel sounds even though it's the same letter. And you just have to "know" the difference because there is no separate vowel to distinguish them.