The Rarest Sounds in Human Languages

追加: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Humans are able to use a wide range of sounds to communicate and create languages. Yet, there are some sounds that are extremely rare and only appear in a handful of languages around the world. What's even crazier is that there are instances where an extremely rare sound appears in a few languages, but it is used by millions of people, maybe even billions. Yes, billions. Today, we look into the rarest sounds of human languages. Let me start off with rottic vowel. One of the rarest sound in the world, but that also appears to be used by millions if not billions of people.

[00:00:37]Also called our colored vowels. These are extremely rare in languages, but they're also extremely common because of one language, English, and more specifically American English. And here I mean English spoken in the United States and Canada.

[00:00:54]>> Word R. car. But due to the widespread of American English in the world, these vowels are common. It's also present in English spoken in Ireland. Artic vowels can be realized in various ways. The tip of the tongue may be turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vow. And besides English, these vowels are also found in some dialects of Mandarin Chinese, mainly the standard northern Mandarin and southwestern Mandarin.

[00:01:25]They are found in some smaller indigenous languages in the US and China as well. The voice leod dental fl is a phone found mainly in central African languages such as ka and mangu. It's technically found in about 100 languages but all of them belong to the same three language families. Chadic languages, boom languages and central sudanic languages. While they are rare outside of Africa, there has been some reports in some languages like the Sika language in Indonesia. It's a flap or a tap, meaning the tongue makes a brief contact to the place of articulation.

[00:02:08]>> This consonant is a nonrotic consonant.

[00:02:10]So the place of articulation is the lower lip and upper teeth. That's why it's called labio dental.

[00:02:18]Vil Labial tree. This sound is extremely rare and is only found in a handful of languages. This monies includes Pir, a language that has baffled many linguists for decades, but also the Dongo language, an openian language spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

[00:02:37]It's also found in the Permac language, an oralic language. These languages are spoken on three different continents.

[00:02:44]Meaning that while this phone name is quite rare, it still happens to be used throughout the world and not just a specific area. It's a true consonant which means it is produced by directing air over an articulator so that it vibrates. Brah.

[00:02:59]Its place of articulation is bilium which means it is articulated with both lips. In most instances, it is only found as the trilled release of a prinualized stop. This means that to appear, this sound is a specific context such as the sound B or it then follows this context. Because it's a rare sound, I could not find a proper recording of the sound in a language. I mean, I'm sure that exists somewhere, but I just could not find any. And if you have any idea of where to find that, let me know in the comments. The voiceless post alvola and verative phone. It is found in Swedish and in most dialects of Swedish. People often describe it as a simultaneous ch and a >> who.

[00:03:53]>> At the same time it has variousizations whose precise phonic characterization are mount of debate but which often feature distinct linearization. The sound is represented in Swedish autography by a number of spelling and the most common ones are SJ, STG, SKG and sometimes before front vowels SK and it's a different sound from sha a another voiceless ficative in Swedish but this one is a palaton one sha a >> who >> usually it's spelled differently like TJ or kg and before front vowels K. It's a trademark of the Swedish language making it famous for having this funny. And it seems that Swedish is the only language that has this funny.

[00:04:46]The voice or figative >> it's often described as an approximate because it is often realized as such.

[00:05:02]The way this sound is made can shift between being an approximate and frigative. Essentially, it's created by squeezing the vocal track at the place of articulation, but not so much that it causes a lot of friction as air passes through. It is not found in many languages, but in the few is found in a lot of them actually have a lot of speakers. So, the funny rare, but it's also widespread at the same time. This includes languages like Arabic, Malle or Kabil just to give a few examples. It's also found in some instances and dialects of some languages like Ukrainian.

[00:05:40]If you know any other rare phons that are worth mentioning, leave a comment about them. In the meantime, I'll see you in the next video.