Re: whoops, another question -- pharyngealized consonants anyone?

Nik Taylor:

>Danny Wier wrote:
> > Aw, I had it (it's in some book called the Cambridge Encyclopedia of
> > Language or something like that).  Or else I'd be glad to type it.  I=
t=20
>has
> > over 100 consonants, easy; half of them are clicks.
>
>92 consonants, made up of 47 clicks and 45 non-clicks.
Oh I remember now -- 140-plus consonant *and* vowel phonemes total.  But =
92=20
consonants is only nine more than Ubyx's 83 (which is still listed in the=
=20
Guinness Book of World Records as the record holder, or is it...)

> > That same page shows Rotokas as having six consonants (for the record=
=20
>low),
> > but someone told me it actually has eight, which would result in a ti=
e=20
>with
> > Hawai'ian.
>
>Hmm, well, the six consonants the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
>listed were /p/, /t/, /k/, /B/, /r/ (tap), and /G/.
A rare example of a language that has almost as many vowels as consonants=
! =20
The Rotokas alphabet is thus:

a b e g i k o p r t u

Makes for a real short game of Wheel of Fortune.

Other mentions in Guinness: a language in Vietnam has over 50 (!) vowels=20
(but do they include length, nasality, even tone?).  Ojibwa (called in th=
e=20
GBWR by its old name, Chippewa -- this is the language of Shania Twain's=20
adoptive family) is the language with the most complex verb grammar,=20
Tabassaran with the most noun cases (52, but we're dealing with an=20
agglutinative language here), Abkhaz with the fewest vowels (2: a and @),=
=20
English as the most irregular (well over 200 irregular verbs), and Turkis=
h=20
as the most regular (one irregular verb: _olmak_ 'to be').  Esperanto and=
=20
Volap=FCk are mentioned as two invented language with a perfectly regular=
=20
grammar.  Largest alphabet is Khmer with 72 letters (some of which are=20
archaic), the most common phoneme is /a/ (found in all the world's=20
languages), and the rarest phones are Czech r-caron ([r] with a [Z]=20
coloring) and the bilabial click (or 'pop') of some Khoisan language.

Danny

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