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For examples:
Tom is rambling in his speech
Tom is babbling in his speech
Do both of them mean the same thing if I use them in a sense to mean that someone is talking for a while in a very rapid and disconnected way.
In dictionaries I found babble and rumble hugely similar. Are there any subtle difference that native speakers may take note?
1talk rapidly and continuously in a foolish, excited, or incomprehensible way:
2talk or write at length in a confused or inconsequential way:
Babble and ramble are both derogatory when applied to speech or writing; but beyond that they have very little in common.
The primary sense of babble has to do with >sound<: as your dictionary tells you, it characterizes speech as “rapid and continuous”, so much so that no coherent meaning can be discerned. We use babble to speak of babies’ meaningless syllables, of mindless social chatter, of fluent but uninformed speech, and of speech in foreign languages which we do not understand. We also use the term figuratively of rapidly flowing streams: ‘babbling brooks’.
The primary sense of ramble has to do with >direction<. It was used originally of walking or travel: to wander aimlessly, going nowhere in particular. When ramble is used of speech or writing it indicates that a discourse is similarly directionless: it jumps from one point to another, with no apparent connection and no evident point towards which it is driving.
ADDED:
Incidentally, you’re very unlikely to hear or read “He is babbling in his speech.” Since you’re talking about a person, it would be taken for granted that it his speech which is involved; we‘d just say “He’s babbling.”
“He is rambling in his speech” is unlikely, too; more usual expressions are:
“He’s rambling”, to describe what he’s saying now as incoherent
“He rambles”, to describe his customary speaking style as incoherent
“His speech rambled” to describe the lecture or speech he gave on a specific occasion as incoherent
“His speech is/was rambling”, to suggest that his manner of speaking is/was symptomatic of inebriation or disease
Here is the subtle difference I found in the dictionary I use. I use the pro version.
WordWeb explains both the words here -
Ramble (v): Continue talking or writing in a desultory manner. Please note that there's a noun rambliing as well.
Babble (v): To talk foolishly OR utter meaningless sounds, like a baby, or utter in an incoherent way
So, in your examples, some additional information would make it clear that which of these above mentioned fits.
Found a decent answer from an external website.
Ramble
1 Ramble means to talk at length and boringly without any real organisation or aim : He rambled on for hours about his experiences in the army. It was so boring.
2 It can also be used to describe the type of speech associated with delirium : By the time his temperature had reached 39°C, he was rambling deliriously.
Babble
1 Babble is used as a technical term in linguistics to describe babies' pre-speech vocalisations - the goo goo ga ga noises they make.
2 Babble can also be used to describe disjointed, confused speech affected by emotion - eg : He babbled on excitedly
3 It's also often used as a noun to describe speech which is too distant or overlapping to hear clearly : He could hear a babble of voices coming from the kitchen.
4 and in various forms to describe multiple sounds in general : A babbling brook
So according to this answer, babble basically can mean speech that is disjointed and confusing affected by emotion, from which you can still make out the words out of it. Then it can quite explain my question on this usage of babble.
