Page "Consonant" Paragraph 24

The most common consonants around the world are the three voiceless stops,,, and the two nasals,.

However, even these common five are not universal.

Several languages in the vicinity of the Sahara Desert, including Arabic, lack.

Several languages of North America, such as Mohawk, lack both of the labials and.

The Wichita language of Oklahoma and some West African languages such as Ijo lack the consonant on a phonemic level, but do use it as an allophone of another consonant ( of in the case of Ijo, and of in Wichita ).

A few languages on Bougainville Island and around Puget Sound, such as Makah, lack both of the nasals and.

The ' click language ' Nǁng lacks, and colloquial Samoan lacks both alveolars, and.

Despite the 80-odd consonants of Ubykh, it lacks the plain velar in native words, as do the related Adyghe and Kabardian languages.

But with a few striking exceptions, such as Xavante and Tahitian-which have no dorsal consonants whatsoever-nearly all other languages have at least one velar consonant: the few languages that do not have a simple usually have a consonant that is very similar.

For instance, an areal feature of the Pacific Northwest coast is that historical * has become palatalized in many languages, so that Saanich for example has and but no plain ; similarly, historical * in the Northwest Caucasian languages became palatalized to in Ubykh and in most Circassian dialects.