There are 40 phonemes in the English language?

Why doesn't everyone know that? The number of phonemes in English is not hard to pin down because there are 40 phonemes in the English language.

First, everyone doesn't know that because there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet. Also, it differs by dialect.

Many people pretend like the number of phonemes is hard to pin down but it's not. There are 40 phonemes in English.

Let's have a list then.

Here's the list of the phonemes in the English language,

1.[b]-big
2.[C]-chip
3.[d]-door
4.[D]-then
5.[f]-fish
6.[g]-goat
7.[h]-house
8.[j]-jack
9.[k]-cat, kit
10.[l]-lamp
11.[m]-map
12.[n]-near
13.[N]-sing
14.[p]-pear
15.[r]-road
16.[s]-state
17.[S]-sheep
17.[t]-truck
18.[v]-vent
19.[w]-wet
20.[y]-yet
21.[z]-zoo
22.[Z]-genre, vision, measure
23.[a]-cat
24.[e]-set
25.[i]-sit
26.[o]-corn, fork, four
27.[u]-cut, stuck, struck, front
28.[A]-plate
29.[E]-meet
30.[I]-fight
31.[O]-boat
32.[jU]-mute
33.[oo]-wood
34.[U]-food
35.[ou]-loud
36.[oi]-void
37.[A:]-shot, caught, father, balm, talk, tall, law, slaw, follow, dollar, car, hard, part, sharp
38.[3r']-bird, word, burn, fern
39.[..]-arrest, again, away, afire
40.[..r']-center, theater, realtor, inventor

What about the 'ch' in loch, when said by someone from Scotland?

The number of phonemes is not fixed, because it depends on where you place the threshold for a phoneme. Is the existence of a single minimal pair in the language sufficient to define the participating phones as phonemes? If so, the number of phonemes is very high indeed; if not, what's the minimum number of minimal pairs or sets that you require before you call a phone a phoneme?

For example, /T/ and /D/ participate in only a very small number of minimal pairs; /I/ and /i/ participate in many thousands of minimal pairs. Are the first pair of phones phonemes? The second? Both? Neither? It depends on where you draw the line.

One hears numbers ranging from 36 to 46 for the number of phonemes in English. In teaching or learning English, one can disregard the exact number and simply teach the potential phonemes that participate in the greatest number of minimal pairs or sets first, and then work down from there.

''The number of phonemes is not fixed'' Says you.

There are 40 phonemes in English not 46 or 36.

A phone doesn't even have to have minimal pairs in order to be a phoneme.

One phone can't have minimal pairs. You need two to make a pair. That's why they call them "pairs".

Suppose you don't have to find minimal pairs in order for two phones to be different phonemes. This doesn't invalidate the converse. If you do find minimal pairs then you've shown the two phones to be different phonemes (supposing you've got enough, which depends on where you set the bar as Mxsmanic says).

Dr Adam Brown; Associate Professor at the National Institute of Education, Singapore; dissargees with you (check the link below). Why don't you give us a reason to believe you over him?

http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j27/fonemes.html

Cable, you seem to be aware that there is another side of the argument but you make no attempt to counter it. You just state that there are 40 phonemes without properly backing the statement up. It's my impression that you're only here to provoke a fight.

I mean, if you really were serious then why this ...

"16.[s]-state
"17.[S]-sheep
"17.[t]-truck
"18.[v]-vent"?

There are 41 "phonemes" in your list. You claim that there are 40 phonemes. Canadian Adam asks for a list. You type one up but accidentally type "17" twice so you get to 39 you've got to bung another "phoneme" onto the list to make 40 ... "How about [..r']?" you think to yourself "That'll do."

I'm guessing that if you hadn't typed "17" twice you'd be arguing that [..r'] is just [..] plus [r]. Of course, you'd still be overlooking one rather embarassaing detail. "/T/ and /D/ participate in only a very small number of minimal pairs", as Mxsmanic writes, but /S/ and /Z/ participate in even fewer. Why does your list include /D/, /S/ and /Z/ but not /T/?

So if you count properly and include /T/ then your list becomes 42 phonemes long. How can we save you magic number, 40? Maybe we could say that number 2 is just a combination of the two number 17s, i.e.

"chip" = /tSip/
"ship" = /Sip/
"tip" = /tip/

and say that /tS/ is just /t/ plus /S/. Then we could do the same for number 8, [j]-jack, i.e. say that /dZ/ is not a phoneme but just /d/ plus /Z/.

Another trick you could play would be to take a hint from Mxsmanic and say that /S/ and /Z/ are the same phoneme and say the same for /T/ and /D/ (realise that this is not what he's saying). Oh, isn't the number of phonemes hard to pin down.

There may be 40 phonemes in your accent (or should I say 41 ... or 42) but your list is no good for my accent. Take number 37, for example. There are three different vowels here in my accent (as in RP).

/o/ shot, follow, dollar
/o:/ caught, talk, tall, law, slaw
/a:/ father, balm, car, hard, part, sharp

(I'm using Antimoon's phonemic alphabet)

The vowel /o:/ was already counted as number 26 but you've excluded /o/. This is not surprising because it doesn't exist in North American dialects though it is very much a phoneme in AusE, NZE, RP and many other dialects. As american nic says, "it differs by dialect."

/o:/ caught, talk, tall, law, slaw, corn, fork, four

Want some minimal pairs?

/o/ hot, pot, cot, bomb, dot
/a:/ heart, part, cart, balb, dart

Okay, so for my accent you have to add /o/ but to offset this you can ignore number 40. [..r'] doesn't exist in my accent as I have a non-rhotic accent. This, however, brings me to my next point. There are phonemes in non-rhotic accents that don't exist in rhotic ones. These are the centring diphthongs (though sometimes they're realised as monophthongs).

In RP there are three centring diphthongs: /e../, /i../ and /u../.

/e../ where, there, care, fair, heir
/i../ here, near, beer, idea
/u../ tour, pure, mature

Some dialects have a fourth: /o../.

"The second example concerns pairs of words such as 'bored' and 'board'. In some British accents, there is a difference, the first being pronounced [bo..d] and the second [bo:d]."

(This is from A. Brown's article. I've changed the notation and put single inverted commas where the original had italics.)

I pronounce "fewer" and "pure" to rhyme so you might say that /u../ is not a phoneme in my accent but just /u:../ (or /u:w../) but /e../ and /i../ certainly exist. So there you go: two more phonemes to add to the list. What can be done?

Perhaps we can ignore number 32 ([jU] or /ju:/ in Tom's alphabet, as in "ewe", "mute"). We considered saying that /tS/ and /dZ/ were just /t/ and /d/ plus /S/ and /Z/. We could similarly say that /ju:/ is just /j/ plus /u:/. Indeed the later seems a more obvious thing to do that to than the former. But this still leaves us with too many.

Anyway, let's answer the question first posed.

Q) Why doesn't everyone know that there are 40 phonemes in the English language?

A) Because it's not true.

You mean in North American English.

My inventory of phonemes is different from yours and my count is, therefore, also different.

Don't most people say the t in time different than the t in heart (say it outloud)? Plus, your [I] (at least for me) is just [ui], a dipthong. So it is not a phone. You are therefore wrong about your 40 number.

Quote-''I'm guessing that if you hadn't typed "17" twice you'd be arguing that [..r'] is just [..] plus [r].''

Jim, the [..r'] in ''center'' is a single sound (a rhoticized version of [..]), not an [..] plus an [r]. For more information about that see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_for_English

Quote-''This is called an r-colored schwa. This is a single sound, not a sequence of schwa and r.''

Sure it is, in rhotic accents. It doesn't exist for me. Either way, you've listed 41 "phonemes" which is quite funny.

Okay I lost. There are 43 phonemes in my accent.

1.[b]-big
2.[C]-chip
3.[d]-door
4.[D]-then
5.[f]-fish
6.[g]-goat
7.[h]-house
8.[j]-jack
9.[k]-cat, kit
10.[l]-lamp
11.[m]-map
12.[n]-near
13.[N]-sing
14.[p]-pear
15.[r]-road
16.[s]-state
17.[S]-sheep
18.[t]-truck
19.[T]-think, thought, bath, path
20.[v]-vent
21.[w]-wet
22.[y]-yet
23.[z]-zoo
24.[Z]-genre, vision, measure
25.[a]-cat
26.[e]-set
27.[i]-sit
28.[o]-corn, fork, four
29.[u]-cut, stuck, struck, front
30.[A]-plate
31.[E]-meet
32.[I]-fight
33.[O]-boat
34.[yU]-mute
35.[oo]-wood
36.[U]-food
37.[ou]-loud
38.[oi]-void
39.[A:]-shot, caught, father, balm, talk, tall, law, slaw, follow, dollar, car, hard, part, sharp
40.[3r']-bird, word, burn, fern
41.[..]-arrest, again, away, afire
42.[..r']-center, theater, realtor, inventor
43.[i..]-idea

Quote-''/i../ here, near, beer, idea''

''here'', ''near'' and ''beer'' do not have the [i..] sound in my accent but the [i] sound in ''bit''. [hir], [nir], [bir]. ''where, there, care, fair, heir'' all have the [e] sound in ''set''. [wer], [Ter], [ker], [fer], [er].