What is the most frequent sound used in spoken English?

Answer 1

The S sound.

Answer 2

Linguists use a special alphabet to represent the sound of languages. This is called the International Phonetic Alphabet, and has nothing to do with Alpha Bravo or Charlie. (the last two links below detail the IPA.)

The most common sound in English is possibly 'i' as in "been" or "fear". More likely, though, it's the Schwa. The Schwa is a reduced vowel sound, and sounds like someone saying 'uh'. Schwa is a phonetic sound, and is written as an upside-down e. If you say the words 'upon' or 'alone', you are saying a Schwa as the first sound. It is an unstressed sound, and occurs in many, many English words. It is especially common in Australian English.

The most frequently written letter is E, but the pronunciation of E does not always sound the same.

Answer 3

The most used phonetic sound in English is the mid lax neutral vowel 'uh' which can be represented by any written vowel.

Although dictionaries depict "careful" pronunciation, most unstressed vowels become neutralized in common speech, for example "automatically" often gets the o and i neutralized, but it can occur stressed as well.

what, fun, the, luck, shut, etc...

*The Anything Girl* (above) already called it the "schwa". It is written by linguists as an upside down lower case "e".

Answer 4

with American teenagers, i hear the word that starts with F and ends with K
it seems like they cannot make a sentence without that word in it.

i can understand if you stub your toe on a table leg or something hard, and you express yourself as i have done that myself, but i don't use it all the time.

as for the English in other countries, i don't know.

Answer 5

Yah

Answer 6

Oy Vey!

Answer 7

ar el

Answer 8

s

Answer 9

r

Answer 10

oy