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Re: fewest sounds?

From:Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>
Date:Monday, November 28, 2005, 20:53
On 11/28/05, Reilly Schlaier <schlaier@...> wrote:
> what are the fewest sounds in any language i was wondering how > many sounds are required to make a language work
Rotokas and Pirahã are probably tied with 11 phonemes, 5 vowels and 6 consonants. Some think Pirahã has only 5 consonants so it would have the fewest. Some languages have only three vowels -- typically /i/, /u/, /a/ - but I think most of them have more than the average number of consonants. I vaguely recall hearing something about languages with only two vowels, or even none (no phonetic distinction in vowels, that is), but I'm not sure how certain these phonetic analyses or reconstructions are. A language with very few phonemes will tend to require more syllables to say something than a language with many phonemes, phonotactic constraints being held constant. -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm ...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field