Why are there more consonants than vowels in alphabetic languages?
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Bob Ladd Edinburgh, UK
The answer partly depends on whether we are talking about the sounds or letters of vowels and consonants. By mentioning “alphabetic languages”, the questioner is presumably asking why most versions of our alphabet have roughly 20 consonant letters but only five vowel letters.
The reason for that is simple: classical Latin (for which the Roman alphabet was designed) had about 20 consonant sounds and five vowel sounds. Writing systems tend to be conservative, so languages that use the Roman alphabet have mostly avoided making up new letters, but instead use combinations of letters (“th”, “sh”, “oi” etc.) or “diacritical” marks on existing letters (“é”, “ü”, “ç” etc.) to deal with new sounds.
Most versions of English have 12 to 15 distinct vowel sounds (and usually 24 consonant sounds), so getting by with only five vowel letters is part of the problem that many people experience with English spelling.
It is likely that most languages, alphabetic or not, have more consonant sounds than vowel ones. The World Atlas of Language Structures treats 19 to 25 as an average number of consonant sounds, but five or six for vowel sounds. One reason is that speech sounds have to be readily distinguishable by human listeners. There are a lot more ways to produce distinguishable consonants than vowels.
Francis Blake London, UK
Vowels are formed by shaping the mouth space, largely without the use of the teeth, tongue or lips, and there are only so many distinct shapes one can make without the sounds becoming too similar, and thus causing confusion.
Conversely, consonants can be formed in any number of ways. Try saying the alphabet – minus the vowels – and you will see just how many “tricks” we use in forming the sounds.
Vowels are the main carriers of accent – and of confusion between speakers of the same language who have grown up in different places. I remember trying to tell some friends in Toronto that the picture they were looking at was of All Souls Church, next to Broadcasting House in London. In the end I had to write it down, as they simply couldn’t understand my London vowels!
Alisoun Gardner-Medwin Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland, UK
The answer lies in the shape of the human mouth and how we form sounds. Vowels are created when our lips are open and there are no restrictions to prevent the sound getting out. To form a consonant, we restrict the opening in one of several ways, and there are groups of consonants that share a particular form of restriction.
These groups were suggested by Jacob Grimm, one of the Brothers Grimm who collected folk tales in the early 19th century. He formulated what we call Grimm’s law, to explain why the consonants in a group are related.
Dental consonants are formed when we put the tip of the tongue behind the teeth. Letters in this group are a hard “t”, as in tea, a soft “th”, as in theatre, and a harder “th”, as in that. Other groups are labials, made using the lips, such as “p”, “b”, “v”, “w” and “f”. Gutterals are formed with open lips, and the restriction is in the back of the throat, to form “g”, “k” and “x”.
Herman D’Hondt Mascot, New South Wales, Australia
What is often overlooked is that many languages have far more vowel sounds than there are letters for. We compensate for this in two ways. First, each letter can be pronounced in a variety of different ways. Think of the “e” in the, them, there and these. Or the “a” in rat, rate, war, ware and lark. This variety is far less common with consonants.
The second method used to expand the number of vowels is to combine them, either with other vowels – think of “oo”, “ou” and “eu” – or with diacritical marks. German uses the umlaut diacritic to change the sound of several vowels, for instance “ä”, “ö” and “ü”. Only rarely are diacritics used to alter a consonant. One example is the French cedilla, as in leçon.
Jane Henderson London, UK
It isn’t always true that there are more consonants than vowels in written alphabets. My Complete Korean: Teach Yourself book tells me there are 21 vowels and 14 basic consonants in Hangul, the Korean alphabet (sometimes five of these double up, but arguably those doublings aren’t separate consonants). Even allowing for the three consonants that are pronounced differently depending on their surrounding letters, the vowels win.
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