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From: rharmsen@knoware.nl (Ruud Harmsen)
Subject: Re: how many phonemes?
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Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 03:50:08 GMT
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In article <3jatog$8ll@amhux3.amherst.edu> damastro@news.amherst.edu (David A. Mastroianni) writes:

>About how many phonemes does any individual language recognize?  Is there
>a wide variation between languages?
Yes, there is wide variation. A problem is to agree upon what exactly are the 
separate phonemes in a given language. But that aside:
Some European languages have rather a lot of phonemes, around 50, think of 
German, English, Dutch, Hungarian. Some others have fewer, like Spanish, 
Greek, etc. I believe Hawaiian has very few, around 20?

I think there is a tendency that languages with few phonemes are spoken 
faster (or make that impression to non-native speakers?), apparent if you 
compare English and Spanish, and understandable if you realize that to convey 
the same amount of info with fewer symbols, you need more symbols per second.
