Nez Perce
The phoneme inventory below shows every sound that functions as a meaningful unit in Nez Perce — a Sahaptian language spoken in North America . With 36 phonemes, it has an average-sized 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
affricate
sibilant fricative
Vowels
* Marginal phoneme — occurs only in loanwords or rare contexts.
How large is this inventory?
Nez Perce has 36 phonemes, placing it in the 49th percentile of languages by inventory size — roughly average for a human language.
Compared to English
For English speakers learning Nez Perce, these are the sounds that will require the most focused practice.
In Nez Perce, not in English (30)
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 Nez Perce with another language
See which sounds are shared and which are unique.