Re: whoops, another question -- pharyngealized consonants anyone?
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <grandsir@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Friday, October 8, 1999, 13:58 |
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Danny Wier wrote:
>
> 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. It
> >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
> consonants is only nine more than Ubyx's 83 (which is still listed in the
> Guinness Book of World Records as the record holder, or is it...)
>
> > > That same page shows Rotokas as having six consonants (for the record
> >low),
> > > but someone told me it actually has eight, which would result in a tie
> >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!
> 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
> (but do they include length, nasality, even tone?). Ojibwa (called in the
> GBWR by its old name, Chippewa -- this is the language of Shania Twain's
> adoptive family) is the language with the most complex verb grammar,
> Tabassaran with the most noun cases (52, but we're dealing with an
> agglutinative language here), Abkhaz with the fewest vowels (2: a and @),
> English as the most irregular (well over 200 irregular verbs), and Turkish
> as the most regular (one irregular verb: _olmak_ 'to be'). Esperanto and
> Volap|k are mentioned as two invented language with a perfectly regular
> grammar. Largest alphabet is Khmer with 72 letters (some of which are
> archaic), the most common phoneme is /a/ (found in all the world's
> languages), and the rarest phones are Czech r-caron ([r] with a [Z]
> coloring) and the bilabial click (or 'pop') of some Khoisan language.
>
My version of the Guinness book is from 1987 and the article is exactly
the same! Don't you think it's time for them to try and check if the
last researchs have found new records?
> Danny
>
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