Western Desert
The phoneme inventory below shows every sound that functions as a meaningful unit in Western Desert — a Pama-Nyungan language spoken in Australia . With 23 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
tap
Vowels
* Marginal phoneme — occurs only in loanwords or rare contexts.
How large is this inventory?
Western Desert has 23 phonemes, placing it in the 11th percentile of languages by inventory size — a notably small inventory.
Compared to English
For English speakers learning Western Desert, these are the sounds that will require the most focused practice.
In Western Desert, not in English (14)
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 Western Desert with another language
See which sounds are shared and which are unique.