CHUAVE

12
Consonants
5
Vowels

The phoneme inventory below shows every sound that functions as a meaningful unit in CHUAVE — a Nuclear Trans New Guinea language spoken in Papunesia . With 17 phonemes, it has a relatively small inventory compared to the world's languages. Sounds marked with a dashed border (*) are marginal: they appear only in loanwords or highly specialized contexts and are not part of the core phonological system.

Consonants

approximant

fricative

sibilant fricative

tap

Vowels

* Marginal phoneme — occurs only in loanwords or rare contexts.

How large is this inventory?

Smaller (11) Average (36) Larger (141)
17
phonemes

CHUAVE has 17 phonemes, placing it in the 1th percentile of languages by inventory size — a notably small inventory.

Compared to English

For English speakers learning CHUAVE, these are the sounds that will require the most focused practice.

In CHUAVE, not in English (7)

These sounds don't exist in English — English speakers will need to learn them from scratch.

In English, not in CHUAVE (35)

English speakers learning CHUAVE won't use these sounds — they'll need to suppress them.

Most phonologically similar languages

Ranked by Jaccard similarity — the proportion of phonemes shared relative to the combined inventory of both languages.

Compare CHUAVE with another language

See which sounds are shared and which are unique.