The Tokenizer Tax Across 25 European Languages: Domain Invariance, Cross-Lingual Few-Shot Effects, and the Ukrainian Penalty

arXiv:2605.24718v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Tokenizer fertility the number of tokens per word imposes a hidden cost on non-English NLP. We measure fertility for ten foundation models across 25 European languages on parallel text, producing the first controlled tokenizer tax map for the continent. The tax spans 2.5x from English (1.2 tokens/word) to Greek/Maltese (~3.1), following a clear hierarchy: Romance (1.5-1.7), Germanic (1.7-1.9), Slavic (2.2-2.5), Uralic/Baltic (2.7-3.0). Ukrainian (2.7) pays 15-18% more than cognate Slavic languages, reflecting underrepresentation in pre-training d

Source: arXiv cs.CL — read the full report at the original publisher.

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