Practice question · Numerical answer
Roughly how many distinct sounds does a typical language use to build its entire vocabulary, to the nearest ten?
Hints
- Fewer than a hundred, more than twenty.
- On the order of forty, though inventories range from about eleven to well over a hundred.
Show the answer
40 (answers within ±15 count)
Why
About 40, with enormous variation: Rotokas is often cited with around eleven phonemes and some Khoisan languages with well over a hundred. The point of the number is the ratio, a few dozen meaningless units against a vocabulary of tens of thousands.
Practise Design Features: What Makes Language Language
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