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Metafilter comments link
Metafilter tags: consonant, english, language, linguistics, phoneme, phonology, vowel
Author: spamandkimchi

Although there are only five written vowels, English has 14-21 different vowel sounds, depending on the dialect. This is a much larger vowel inventory than most languages (the smallest is 3). However the consonant inventory for English is a very typical 22, though it does have "th," a relatively uncommon one. From the World Atlas of Language Structures: Consonant inventories of languages range from a low of 6 consonants to a high of 122 consonants. The more typical consonant inventory size is in the low twenties.

Another slightly unusual sound found in English is /ŋ/, often written as 'ng', and found in words like 'wing' or 'singing.' This sound is called 'engma.' About half of languages have this phoneme. Many languages allow this 'ng' sound at the beginning of a word, but not in English.


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