22 consonants and 20 monophthongs distinguished by height, frontness, and lip rounding but not other factors like length or nasality (21 if you count the rhotic schwa). Thus, the ratio is 1.1. I began Knasesj due to a Speedlang challenge, and one of the requirements was having more phonemic vowels than consonants, which I did via a large monophthong inventory plus some diphthongs (for a total of 36 if you include the schwa-final and w-final diphthongs, or 23 if you exclude them). |
Knasesj is unusual in that its plosives, fricatives, and affricates all make different distinctions. The two affricates are both voiceless, the fricatives have a voicing contrast, and the plosives contrast plain vs. ejective. The plain stops are most often realized as voiced, but the WALS page mentions that Tsou has /p t k ɓ ɗ/ and that this does not count as a voicing distinction in plosives for the chapter, so I treated Knasesj the same. |
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