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But I think a qualified phonetician would not have asked the question in this way unless putting on an act of being naïve. There is a difficulty not always appreciated by non-specialists: you can’t enumerate “sounds”. This is because there is no real way to say whether sounds are “the same” or “different” except with reference to a specific language or dialect. For example, English /t/ is by default a voiceless aspirated alveolar plosive, Dutch /t/ is ditto but unaspirated, Swedish /t/ is aspirated but dental, and French /t/ is both unaspirated and dental. So depending on language /t/ may by default be aspirated or unaspirated, alveolar or dental.

I replied, I hope helpfully, that an obvious starting point would be the . See also my page on .

Or is this a serious question for which a serious answer might be sought in Maddieson and Ladefoged, Sounds of the World’s Languages?

Is my correspondent a beginner who should be advised to consult a textbook of general phonetics, e.g. Peter Ladefoged’s Vowels and Consonants (Blackwell), or, even better, to enrol for a course in general phonetics?

The emails I receive about phonetics range from the very naïve to the very sophisticated. Sometimes it is difficult to know which is which. One correspondent writes:I am particularly keen to know where I could find a single list that would include all the sounds found in all the languages. Does such a list exist?

Browsers: I recommend (free) or, if you prefer, (also free).

To see the IPA phonetic symbols in the text, please ensure that you have installed a Unicode font that includes them all, for example or (click name for free download).

John Wells’s phonetic blog archive 16-30 April 2008