English Phonemes: Mastering the Sounds of English

If you’re a native English speaker and trying to learn a new language, learning about English phonemes is an ideal way – and a somewhat unconventional method – to help you acquire most other languages. Phonemes, or sounds, help establish a baseline understanding of how words are formed and assist with pronunciation and other aspects of learning a new language. 

What’s more, phonemes in English help new learners appreciate the wide diversity among the languages of the world. Using WALS, the World Atlas of Language Structures online, as well as this interactive chart of consonants and vowels, let’s explore some of the unusual and not-so-unusual sounds of English.WALS is a large database about the properties of languages. Published and maintained by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, it compares the important grammatical properties of languages and allows users to explore those properties in interactive maps. Properties examined include sentence word order, the presence or absence of particular words, how words are put together, and the language’s sound.

What Are Phonemes and Why Do They Matter?

In English, the words ‘bat’ and ‘pat’ mean different things and are only differentiated by /b/ and /p/, indicating that these sounds are separate phonemes. The system of speech sounds is called phonology. Just like any other language, English has basic sounds that help differentiate words – even similar words. These English sounds are called phonemes; they’re the smallest units in phonology and can even account for different accents in the same language.

Think of these small but mighty sounds in English as essential building blocks of the language. And, as you might expect, English isn’t alone – every language has its own set of basic phonemes. While some languages (like English) have a relatively basic, straightforward collection of phonemes, other languages have a much more complex phonology. 

A language with very different phonemes than our native language can be challenging to learn. The US State Department describes Mandarin and Cantonese as exceptionally difficult for native English speakers to learn, whereas Spanish and Norwegian are easier for native English speakers. One difficulty that English speakers learning Mandarin face is the many phonological differences between the two languages.Based on your native language’s phonemes, the small sounds can impact how quickly you’re able to pick up another tongue’s phonology. Let’s take a look at the phonemes of the English language and how their unique character stacks up with other global languages.

The Role of Phonemes in English Pronunciation

There are 44 total phonemes in English: 19 vowel sounds and 25 consonant sounds. As global languages go, the total number of English sounds is slightly above average, around the same number as other well-known languages. 44 may sound like a lot, but consider the Ubykh language, spoken in the Caucasus region in southern Russia – it has around 90 phonemes!

Conversely, the Austronesian languages of the South Pacific have a low phoneme count – some of the tongues in this language group only have 12-13!
English sounds are thus considered a good baseline for learning other languages. So, if you’re a native English speaker curious about other languages, you’re already off to a great start!

English Vowel Sounds

Vowels: English has a large number of vowels compared to other languages, ‘large’ defined by WALS is more than seven vowels. An ‘average’ number of vowels is five or six. Although we only have five written vowels (a, e, i, o, u), English has 14-21 different vowel sounds, depending on the dialect.

Although English has a lot of vowel sounds, most of the vowels themselves aren’t particularly unusual. It doesn’t have any front rounded vowels, which are fairly uncommon in the world’s languages. Front vowels are said with the tongue near the front of the mouth, and rounded vowels have rounding of the lips when pronounced.

English Consonant Sounds

Consonants: English has an average-sized consonant inventory (about 22 consonants). The Rotokas language of Papua New Guinea has only six consonants, which is the smallest number of any language.

English has two consonants that are unusual among languages.  These are the ‘th’ sounds, as in ‘thunder’ or ‘think.’ Of the world’s languages, only 8% have ‘th’ sounds.  Historically, ‘th’ sounds often come from ’t’ or ‘d’ sounds. This happened independently in English, Spanish, and Tashelhiyt (Berber; Morocco).

Another slightly unusual sound found in English is /ŋ/, often written as ‘ng’ and found in words like ‘wing’ or ‘singing.’ This sound is called ‘engma.’ About half of languages have this phoneme. Many languages allow this ‘ng’ sound at the beginning of a word, but you’ll never find it there in English.WALS lists more phonemic features, like tone, vowel nasalization, and differenttypes of consonants, that can be explored.

Comparing English Sounds to Other Languages

English doesn’t have front-rounded vowels. These vowels are pronounced by placing the tongue as far forward as possible and rounding the lips. French and German have the vowels /y/, /ø/, and /œ/. These sounds are unknown in English phonemes, making some vowel sounds in those languages hard for English speakers to acquire. 

Comparing the sounds of English to other languages can help us understand and appreciate some of the oddities of our language, like its large number of vowels or uncommon ‘th’ sounds. In doing so we can also learn more about what sounds are common or unusual in languages spoken around the world.

Comparing the sounds of many languages tells us more about what’s possible in language and helps determine which sounds make a language unique. We tend to think that our native language is normal and everyone else’s is weird, but by comparing linguistic features we can see that all languages have a little weirdness in them.No matter how challenging the transition from English phonemes to other language sounds is, Pimsleur can help you become conversational in over 50 languages. Sign up with a Premium or All Access subscription today!