LINGUISTICS
Phoneme Inventory Comparison
Compare phoneme inventories across languages. Select two languages to see shared and unique consonants and vowels.
24
English total
20
Spanish total
Shared
0%
Similarity
Shared
English only
Spanish only
Consonants
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Vowels
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About Phoneme Inventories
A phoneme inventory is the set of distinctive sounds (phonemes) used in a language. Languages vary dramatically in inventory size — from as few as 11 phonemes (Rotokas) to over 100 (some Khoisan languages).
Consonants are produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract, while vowels are produced with an open vocal tract and vary by tongue height, backness, and lip rounding.
Comparing inventories reveals typological patterns — for example, nearly all languages have the vowels /i/, /a/, /u/ and the consonants /m/, /n/, /k/.
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