.
What, exactly does that mean?
Well, compare that number to the number of phonemes in other languages. For example, some languages in Africa have more than 100 phonemes and the Hawaiian language has only 13 phonemes.
According to some recent phonetic analysis conducted by University of Aukland psychologist Quentin Atkinson, places more recently settled by humans have fewer phonemes.
Very interesting, I thought.
*The number of phonemes for individual speakers in any language varies slightly with different dialects.
Data from an article in The Week.
