I am trying to find a table of major languages and the number of phonemes that each contains. I’ve googled but I can’t find what I’m looking for. Any help?
I’m trying to understand whether this is a reason I have an easy time with languages that some consider more complex and difficult to prounounce, but struggle with others that are less so. For example I found German fairly easy to learn and retain, but Spanish totally kicks my butt, which is the opposite of what most people expect.
Well, I found a .pdf with the languages you mentioned: the table is on page two
English and German have a similar number (44 English, 46 German), with a similar distribution by category. Spanish has only 24.
YMMV as there is some variation by dialect.
What do you mean by “easy to learn”. Easy to learn the vocabular or easy to learn the pronunciation. Spanish vocabulary is pretty easy to learn because there are so many cognates in English. But the English pronunciation system is closer to German than to Spanish since it shares a closer common ancestor with that language. (The cognates, btw, are more often due to the influence of French and Latin on English, not Spainsh directly, athough some cognates do come directly from Spanish.)
Of course, there are plenty of Germnan/English congnates, too, but they tend to be more the “helper words” like “and, the, when, to, etc” rather than the “big words” that convey the main meaning of a sentence.
Brain, the term you want to search on are is “UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database” (UPSID for short). Here are some links to get you started:
http://www.langmaker.com/db/ups_index_language.htm
http://www.langmaker.com/db/ups_index_phonemeinventory.htm#35
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/faciliti/sales/software.htm#upsid
…
The first link is a list of languages (not every language) with the number of phonemes for each given on the right. Note that the number of phonemes in a language can be very much an arbitrary distinction … but the numbers in UPSID are pretty durned close (i.e. a language listed as having 30 phonemes won’t really have 50).
The second link is listed by number of phonemes to the left, with all UPSID languages having that number grouped accordingly.
The third link is if you want to acquire the full-blown database and associated software from UCLA (not free-ware, unfortunately).
Thanks, that’s exactly what I was looking for. And it more or less matches up with my theory… languages that are easy for me have at least as many phonemes as English. (And by “easy”, to answer another question, I learn them relatively quicker and with fewer hours of study).
However I am a little puzzled by the numbers… they are both smaller and less varied than what I expected. I am no linguist but I had heard figures like 130 and 120 for Russian and English respectively, and around 90 for Japanese. I guess whatever measurements those were that I heard, they weren’t phonemes. Any ideas what the high numbers may have been, other than my imagination?
Intuitively, it should be easier for you to learn languages with fewer phonemes. It’s very difficult for me to imagine how more phonemes could make a language easier for you to learn.
Do you have a sample size to work with of two languages only?
-FrL-
To bowdlerize considerably:
Phonemes can be described in extra-detailed terms that are called allophones. An example from English would be descrbing the aspirated “p” in “pin” and the unaspirated “p” in “spin” as being separate allophones (represented /p[sup]h[/sup]/ and /p/, respectively) of the phoneme [p].
Perhaps the sound inventories with the larger numbers were based on allophonic representations?
For the high numbers, they could have been counting allophones rather than simply phonemes.
If you’re strictly talking (ha!) pronunciation here, I can see where German would be easier than Spanish. I would echo Frylock’s question also - have you ever studied languages other than Spanish or German?
So if the two posts come in at the same time are they arranged alphabetically?
::shakes tiny fist::
Damn you bordelond!
::stamps tiny foot::
When you say “learn,” do you mean learn to speak, listen, read, or write? The number of phonemes should have much less to do with your ability to learn to read and write than to speak and listen, shouldn’t it. And I would think that number of phonemes would be much less important than number of phonemes in common with a language you already know.
German pronunciation makes it easier to pronounce than Spanish?
-FrL-
German has a pretty straightforward 1:1 system of letters to sounds. Once you learn the sounds then you can pronounce just about anything by seing it written out (although I suppose this is probably true in the case of Spanish as well, my point is probably bunk!). In any case, learning the pronunciation rules of a given language is not coeval with learning a language. In your OP, are you explicitly referring to pronunciation when you say that you found “…German fairly easy to learn and retain…?”
I’ve studied German, French, Spanish, Japanese, and Albanian. Talking about ease of speaking and listening, German and Albanian were easiest for me. With all that rich diversity of sounds I felt it was a pleasure to speak them, like the taste of espresso and the aroma of a rich cigar in your mouth. The others really didn’t make that impression. And I get the same feeling when I hear Mandarin or Russian as well. I couldn’t figure out what might make random languages so different, so I thought maybe it is the phonic diversity.