<p>You're gonna have a hard time with "majority of the entire IPA". Non-pulmonic consonants are rare, and some consonants are hard to contrast (e.g. /β/ vs. /v/), while vowels are often highly allophonic. Natural languages tend to have fewer IPA places and distinction via aspiration, labialization, etc.  </p>

<p>My best answer to your question would be Ithkuil (constructed, almost unspeakable language). It has 58 phonemes, with unusually many vowels (13). This allows it to have mostly single phonemes for morphemes. Ithkuil's Roman transliteration is a bit strange, as some phonemes use diacritics and others have digraphs, but it also has its own script (morpho-phonemic with alphabetic characters).</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-07T22:19:46.057Z
There are [many languages with far greater extremes than Ithkuil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme#Numbers_of_phonemes_in_different_languages). Even English has 12-13 monophthongs and 8 or so diphthongs.
curiousdannii
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-08T05:37:23.943Z
Yes, you are right about that. Ithkuil was mainly the answer because of the 1-phoneme-per-morpheme thing. Of course, if you look at characters-per-morpheme in Ithkuil script, the ratio is smaller, while it is larger in the Latin transliteration.
Cecilia
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-07T21:11:03.677Z
2018-08-08T09:21:53.673Z
2018-08-08T09:21:53.673Z
Cecilia
<p>I'm constructing an auxlang/artlang <em>(temporarily named Syn)</em>. </p>

<hr>

<p><em>The Syn is (being) designed to interface with any known human language, with a wildly uniform set of simplistic, unambiguous symbols.</em></p>

<hr>

<p>I have almost finished the phonetic alphabet component and have been trying to transliterate several languages into this while translating some that I know now on the side. However, since I'm not a native speaker of any of the transliterations and google translate is becoming not much of a help, I can't pinpoint the exact phonetic equivalent of some words. Now I'm running out of practice scripts from different spoken languages to accurately transliterate. Hence, I think I'm gonna need another language similar to what I'm making.</p>

<hr>

<p>Are there any languages, written or spoken, natural or constructed, that occupy majority of the entire phonetic alphabet, with as little diacritics, as few ambiguous strokes, and as strict 1-to-1 symbol-phoneme as possible?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-07T22:21:41.480Z
"and as strict 1-to-1 morpheme-phoneme as possible" What does this mean? A language that only has single phoneme morphemes? I don't know of any that do that. Do you mean 1-to-1 character to phoneme instead?
curiousdannii
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-10T07:24:04.040Z
@curiousdannii There is  [Pleistocenese](http://jbr.me.uk/pleisto.html), with indeed  roughly 1-to-1 morpheme-phoneme correspondence, however its phonemes are not quite what we call phonemes in current languages.
Radovan Garabík
<phonology><morphology><phonetics>
What language uses the most amount of phonemes?
# What language uses the most amount of phonemes?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-08-07)

I'm constructing an auxlang/artlang *(temporarily named Syn)*.

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*The Syn is (being) designed to interface with any known human language, with a wildly uniform set of simplistic, unambiguous symbols.*

---

I have almost finished the phonetic alphabet component and have been trying to transliterate several languages into this while translating some that I know now on the side. However, since I'm not a native speaker of any of the transliterations and google translate is becoming not much of a help, I can't pinpoint the exact phonetic equivalent of some words. Now I'm running out of practice scripts from different spoken languages to accurately transliterate. Hence, I think I'm gonna need another language similar to what I'm making.

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Are there any languages, written or spoken, natural or constructed, that occupy majority of the entire phonetic alphabet, with as little diacritics, as few ambiguous strokes, and as strict 1-to-1 symbol-phoneme as possible?

**Tags:** phonology, morphology, phonetics

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: "and as strict 1-to-1 morpheme-phoneme as possible" What does this mean? A language that only has single phoneme morphemes? I don't know of any that do that. Do you mean 1-to-1 character to phoneme instead?  
> **username_2**: @username_1 There is  [Pleistocenese](http://jbr.me.uk/pleisto.html), with indeed  roughly 1-to-1 morpheme-phoneme correspondence, however its phonemes are not quite what we call phonemes in current languages.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2018-08-07. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

You're gonna have a hard time with "majority of the entire IPA". Non-pulmonic consonants are rare, and some consonants are hard to contrast (e.g. /β/ vs. /v/), while vowels are often highly allophonic. Natural languages tend to have fewer IPA places and distinction via aspiration, labialization, etc.

My best answer to your question would be Ithkuil (constructed, almost unspeakable language). It has 58 phonemes, with unusually many vowels (13). This allows it to have mostly single phonemes for morphemes. Ithkuil's Roman transliteration is a bit strange, as some phonemes use diacritics and others have digraphs, but it also has its own script (morpho-phonemic with alphabetic characters).

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: There are [many languages with far greater extremes than Ithkuil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme#Numbers_of_phonemes_in_different_languages). Even English has 12-13 monophthongs and 8 or so diphthongs.  
> **username_3**: Yes, you are right about that. Ithkuil was mainly the answer because of the 1-phoneme-per-morpheme thing. Of course, if you look at characters-per-morpheme in Ithkuil script, the ratio is smaller, while it is larger in the Latin transliteration.  

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