A phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language.
2006-10-26 12:08:18 · 4 answers · asked by Jeff M 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Rotokas and Mura are tied for least with 11.
!Xu has the most with 141.
This is based on a survey called USPID (UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database), but they only looked at one language in each language family, so there could be some with more/less.
2006-10-26 12:49:43 · answer #1 · answered by Goddess of Grammar 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Alpine Alli is right on the money. !Xõó has 126 consonants and Rotokas has 6 consonants. Hawaiian is close with 8 consonants, but not the correct answer. (Why don't people actually read the other answers before chiming in with incorrect information?)
2006-10-27 00:16:13 · answer #2 · answered by Taivo 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Alli's answer is fabulous! Very interesting!
I would have guessed Hawaiian for one of the least...
2006-10-26 21:27:03 · answer #3 · answered by drshorty 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
least": Hawaiian - 11 letters and sounds
a,e,i,o,u, h,k,l,m,n,w
2006-10-26 21:58:33 · answer #4 · answered by leo b 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋