Lebanese Arabic
The phoneme inventory below shows every sound that functions as a meaningful unit in Lebanese Arabic — a Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Africa . With 50 phonemes, it has a relatively large 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
Vowels
* Marginal phoneme — occurs only in loanwords or rare contexts.
How large is this inventory?
Lebanese Arabic has 50 phonemes, placing it in the 84th percentile of languages by inventory size — a notably large inventory.
Compared to English
For English speakers learning Lebanese Arabic, these are the sounds that will require the most focused practice.
In Lebanese Arabic, not in English (35)
These sounds don't exist in English — English speakers will need to learn them from scratch.
Most phonologically similar languages
Ranked by Jaccard similarity — the proportion of phonemes shared relative to the combined inventory of both languages.
Compare Lebanese Arabic with another language
See which sounds are shared and which are unique.