Re: Phoneme distribution

Fredrik Ekman wrote:
>
> It is quite common to see tables of how different letters are distributed
> in typical texts of a given language, but have there been any similar
> investigations regarding phonemes of the spoken language?
Well, I'm looking thru my recently-purchased Cambridge Encyclopedia of
the English Language, and I come across the following tables, for RP:

Consonants
/n/ = 7.58%
/t/ = 6.42%
/d/ = 5.14%
/s/ = 4.81%
/l/ = 3.66%
/D/ = 3.56%
/r/ = 3.51%
/m/ = 3.22%
/k/ = 3.09%
/w/ = 2.81%
/z/ = 2.46%
/v/ = 2.00%
/b/ = 1.97%
/f/ = 1.79%
/p/ = 1.78%
/h/ = 1.46%
/N/ = 1.15%
/g/ = 1.05%
/S/ = 0.96%
/j/ = 0.88%
/dZ/ = 0.60%
/tS/ = 0.41%
/T/ = 0.37%
/Z/ = 0.10%
Total for consonants: 60.78%
Vowels
/@/ = 10.74%
/I/ = 8.33%
/e/ = 2.97%
/aI/ = 1.83%
/V/ = 1.75%
/eI/ = 1.71%
/i:/ = 1.65%
/@U/ = 1.51%
/&/ = 1.45%
/Q/ = 1.37% (turned script a)
/O:/ = 1.24%
/u:/ = 1.13%
/U/ = 0.86%
/A:/ = 0.79%
/aU/ = 0.61%
/3:/ = 0.52% (the symbol that looks like a 3; open-mid central
unrounded)
/E@/ = 0.34%
/I@/ = 0.21%
/OI/ = 0.14%
/U@/ = 0.06%
Total for vowels: 39.21%  (Interesting, because I'd've thought the total
for vowels would be lower)

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