8 Vowels and 24 consonants

[arivero]

The current Fields medal awarded to Maryna Viazovska makes me wonder: which is the optimal/preferred number of consonants and vowels of a spoken language? Do we have some statistics? Does it depends on particularities of the pronuntiation?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Why are the Dutch hoarding all those vowels when the poor Bosnians and Poles need them so badly?

 

[arivero]

Why are the Dutch hoarding all those vowels when the poor Bosnians and Poles need them so badly?

Do not discard they opt for an error-correcting pronunciation based on 24 vowels and 8 consonants.

 

[phinds]

Do not discard they opt for an error-correcting pronunciation based on 24 vowels and 8 consonants.

Hm ... that many vowels seems like an error-inducing method.

 

[Hornbein]

English has a great many, Hawaiian has few. English has more sounds than are found in the Roman alphabet, so writing it is a transliteration.

 

[256bits]

Goes to show that english as a melange of a great many languages by borrowing from wherever it sees fit will quite probably last for quite a long time, just because of its adaptablity.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Goes to show that english as a melange of a great many languages by borrowing from wherever it sees fit will quite probably last for quite a long time, just because of its adaptablity.

"English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” - James Nicoll.

 

[jim mcnamara]

Salishan languages in the pacific northwest are consonant dense. Entire sentences are sometimes formed of consonants only.

Salishan languages are a primary language family, like Indo-European.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=list+of+primary+language+families

 

[pinball1970]

"English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."

We had to be whores, tribes kept bending over backwards to get over here and do their worst and a few got through.
I think it worked out ok, my ancestors had a hard time possibly but after over a 1000 years of invasions of our country lives and language? Out popped Chaucer, Shakespeare, a few other guys.
Its not my thing really but I have heard they were ok.

 

[Astronuc]

"English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” - James Nicoll.

In other words, "fervent acquisition".