Is English a consonants dominant language ?

Question

some English speakers said that english is consonants dominating , what does that mean?

Answer 1

If you are looking at samples of actual, spoken English, I would say they are correct, at least if we are grouping EUROPEAN languages together. That is, a typical sample of spoken English includes many more consonant sounds than a similar sample of, for example, Italian. BUT does it do so AS much as, say, German or Russian? (I don't think so.) And how does it compare with the world's languages generally? That is a harder question.

People have used different measures to classify languages as "consonantal" or "vocalic" (or 'more' one or the other), so it can be confusing. But consider the following.

First, it is generally true that languages HAVE more consonant-sounds than vowel-sounds. So it we just list all the consonant sounds and vowel sounds that appear in a language I think we will ALWAYS find more consonants. So we're not looking for an even proportion much less MORE vowels in the language to call it "vocalic".

Now if we use JUST this measure --called a "phonemic inventory" ("phonemes" are the distinct meaningful sounds a language uses), most dialects of English have ALMOST as many different vowel-sounds as consonants! (The proportion is 1.27 consonants per vowel.)
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/InsideLanguage/ILPhonology.htm

But when you look by that scale and find that the 'world proportion' is 2.5 it may make you wonder. More than that, Hawaiian and its Polynesian relatives, which CLEARLY are 'vocalic' sounding have nearly the same proportion as English, and Spanish and Italian have a much HIGHER proportion of consonant sounds?! This method is clearly flawed!!

A better method would be to sit down with a dictionary (or representative sample of it!) and count up the ratio of consonants and vowels in the language's actual WORDS.

But this too has problems. Two main reasons for that

1) Words in a dictionary are listed by a "lexical" form -- usually its simplest form, without the additions (in English that's usually suffixes) used to make the forms you use in speech (e.g., -s, -ed, -ing)

2) We use some words much more often than others! Do you know that the proportion of consonants to vowels in the FULL list is similar to that for the MOST used list?


So, you have to move on to large, representative samples of ACTUAL speech (a bit of a job!)

But when you do this, beware of simply looking at the SPELLING and counting the number of consonants and vowels of the written form. This works well for SOME languages, not too well for others. Two major problems in doing this with English:
1) Single sounds may be represented by TWO letters ('digraphs'), e.g., th, sh, ch, ng, oo. (There's also a question about how to count 'diphthongs' -- where two vowel sounds are treated as virtually one ("oi", "ou", "ai" -- in fact, note that some Modern English 'long vowels' are actually diphthongs! "i" and "a" and even "o" [with a slight u/oo sound at the end])

2) Modern English has many SILENT letters.

Example: "through" -- counting the letters you the proportion of consonants to vowels is 5:2.
In SPOKEN English - "th" and "ou" each represent ONE sound, so the word breaks up into TH + R+ U + (GH)
--in MIDDLE English, the "gh" was pronounced, so the proportion would be 3:1
--in MODERN English, "gh" is silent, so the proportion is 2:1.

I think the following link (see section 3.1), which suggest that Polish is actually more vocalic than English, may have used this faulty method (of counting LETTERS, rather than SOUNDS). It is correct, however, to criticize the method, already explained above, of labeling languages as "vocalic" or "consonantal" based on their "phonemic inventory"
http://elex.amu.edu.pl/~krynicki/my_pres/my_pres_6c.htm

Unfortunately, I do NOT have at hand the sort of analysis of spoken texts that would help to settle this question. But the 'gut-feeling' of many that Hawaiian and Romance languages like Italian and Spanish use more VOWELS in actual speech than English does, and that other Germanic languages, and Slavic languages, use more CONSONANTS than English, seem pretty sound, esp when you consider:

1) English, like the Germanic and Slavic languages, uses more:
a) consonant CLUSTERS (mostly two-sounds- like "br"... a few three-sounds, e.g., "str")
b) CLOSED syllables (that is, C[onsonant]-V[owel]-C[onsonant] pattern), while languages like Italian uses far more OPEN syllables (C-V)

2) There are quite a few consonants in common English words that have become silent, while the same sounds (or their relatives) are still pronounced in these other languages. (Example - "knight" - with silent 'k' and 'gh' now has 2 consonant sounds, 1 vowel sound; the German equivalent , "Knecht" still has 4 consonant-sounds, 1 vowel.) Combine this with other elements of the Norman French influence on (Middle) English and it's understandable that English has become a bit LESS "consonantal" in sound than, e.g., German

Another factor that may contribute to how consonantal a language is PERCEIVED to be is what TYPES of consonants it uses (and uses most frequently). An /s/ or /m/ sound are not felt to be as hard or harsh (as 'consonantal' perhaps) as a /k/ or /ch/ (esp. 'gutteral sounds' formed further back in the throat). Not to mention that we sometimes ASSOCIATE a particular language with a particular dialect. (For example, in many ears, German conjures up the sound of Hitler's Austrian dialect, which many Germans hear as much harsher than their own dialect.)

Answer 2

Dunno. Every language has more consonants than vowels. Perhaps you're referring to the fact that English allows for (and even prefers) closed syllables as opposed to open ones. This is why speakers of Japanese, which has almost exclusively open syllables (and virtually no consonant clusters) tend to insert vowels where they normally don't exist in English. For example, for 'street', their pronunciation is more like 'sutoreeto' (until they become more proficient, that is:-)

Answer 3

English is the language of commerce.

Answer 4

there is no RULE as far as i know. it just was whatever sounded best i think. really now, does english make much sense as far as spelling?