s. The symbol in the
. There are a few languages that lack either sound but have [m] (e.g., colloquial Samoan). There are some languages (e.g.,
| Language | Word | IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
| Meaning | Notes |
| Armenian The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
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'pomegranate' |
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| Basque Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
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[ni] |
'I' |
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CatalanCatalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
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[ˈnɔw] |
'new' |
See Catalan phonology |
ChineseThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
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Mandarin |
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[nan˧˥] |
'difficult' |
See Mandarin phonology The phonology of Standard Chinese is reproduced below. Actual production varies widely among speakers, as people inadvertently introduce elements of their native dialects...
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CzechCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
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[na] |
'on' |
See Czech phonologyThis article discusses the phonological system of the Czech language- Vowels :There are 10 vowel phonemes in Czech. 5 of them are short and 5 are long. The duration of the long vowels is approximately double in comparison with their short counterparts. Long and short vowels form minimal pairs. The...
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DutchDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
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[nɑxt] |
'night' |
See Dutch phonologyDutch is a Germanic language and as such has a similar phonology to other Germanic languages...
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| English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
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[naɪs] |
'nice' |
See English phonology English phonology is the study of the sound system of the English language. Like many languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect...
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FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
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[ɑnːɑn] |
'I give' |
See Finnish phonology Unless otherwise noted, statements in this article refer to Standard Finnish, which is based on the dialect spoken in Häme Province in central south Finland. Standard Finnish is used by professional speakers, such as the reporters and the news presenters on television.-Vowels:Phonetically, the...
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| Georgian Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
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[ˈkʼɑni] |
'skin' |
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| German German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
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[ˈlant͡sə] |
'lance' |
See German phonology This article is about the phonology of the German language based on standard German. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof, including geographical variants .Since German is a pluricentric language, there are a number of different...
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| Greek Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
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[ˈnama] |
'communion wine' |
See Modern Greek phonology This page presents a sketch of the phonology of Standard Modern Greek.-Consonants:The consonantal system of Greek is difficult to describe, as there is considerable debate about which sounds to describe as separate phonemes and which to analyse as conditional allophones...
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GujaratiGujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...
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[nəhi] |
'no' |
See Gujarati phonology Gujarati phonology is the study of the inventory and patterns of the consonants, vowels, and prosody of the Gujarati language.-Vowels:*Sanskrit's phonemic vowel length has been lost...
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| Hawaiian The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
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[naka] |
'to shake' |
See Hawaiian phonology This article is a linguistic description of the phonological system of Hawaiian based on documented experiences of the people who developed the Hawaiian alphabet during the 1820s and scholarly research on the Hawaiian language conducted by lexicographers and linguists from 1949 to present.Hawaiian...
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| Hindi-Urdu |
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[nəjaː] |
'new' |
See Hindi–Urdu phonology |
HungarianHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
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[nɒɟi] |
'grandma' |
See Hungarian phonologyHungarian phonology is notable for its process of vowel harmony, the frequent use of geminate consonants and the presence of otherwise uncommon palatal stops.- Consonants :...
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ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
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[ˈnano] |
'dwarf' |
See Italian phonologyThis article is about the phonology of the Italian language. It deals with the phonology and phonetics of Standard Italian as well as with geographical variants.-Vowels:Notes:*In Italian there is no phonemic distinction between long and short vowels...
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Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
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[hantai] |
'opposite' |
See Japanese phonologyThis article deals with the phonology of the Japanese language.-Consonants:The Japanese vowels are pronounced as monophthongs, unlike in English; except for , they are similar to their Spanish or Italian counterparts....
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| Korean Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
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[na] |
'I' |
See Korean phonologyThis article is a technical description of the phonetics and phonology of Korean.Korean has many allophones, so it is important here to distinguish morphophonemics from corresponding phonemes and allophones .-Consonants:The following are phonemic transcriptions of Korean consonants.# are voiced ...
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| Malay Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
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[nasi] |
'cooked rice' |
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MalayalamMalayalam , is one of the four major Dravidian languages of southern India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with official language status in the state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry. It is spoken by 35.9 million people...
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[kənni] |
'virgin' |
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| Maltese Maltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...
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[lenbuˈba] |
'truncheon' |
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| Ngwe Ngwe is a Niger–Congo language that is spoken in Cameroon. As of 2001, Ngwe had 73,200 speakers, which was an increase from the numbers of previous censuses. It is part of the Bamileke dialect continuum, and its closest relatives are Yemba and Ngiemboon....
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Mmockngie dialect |
[nøɣə̀] |
'sun' |
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NorwegianNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
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[mɑnː] |
'man' |
See Norwegian phonology The sound system of Norwegian resembles that of Swedish. There is considerable variation among the dialects, but the variant generally taught to foreign students is Standard Eastern Norwegian, which is the one described in this article.-Consonants:...
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| Pirahã Pirahã is a language spoken by the Pirahã. The Pirahã are an indigenous people of Amazonas, Brazil, living along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon....
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[níˈʔàì̯] |
'you' |
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SlovakSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
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[na] |
'on' |
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SpanishSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
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[ˈnað̞a] |
'nothing' |
See Spanish phonology This article is about the phonology and phonetics of the Spanish language. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Castilian Spanish, the standard dialect used in Spain on radio and television. For historical development of the sound system see History of Spanish...
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TamilTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
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[naːɽɯ] |
'country' |
See Tamil phonology Tamil phonology is characterised by the presence of retroflex consonants and multiple rhotics. Tamil does not distinguish phonologically between voiced and unvoiced consonants; phonetically, voice is assigned depending on a consonant's position in a word. Tamil phonology permits few consonant...
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| Turkish Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
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[ned̪æn] |
'reason' |
See Turkish phonologyThe phonology of the Turkish language describes the set of sounds and their relationships with one another in spoken Turkish. One characteristic feature of Turkish is a system of vowel harmony that distinguishes between front and back vowels. The majority of words in Turkish adhere to a system of...
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VietnameseVietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
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[ɓan˧ˀ˨ʔ ɗi] |
'you're going' |
Occurs only before alveolar consonants. See Vietnamese phonologyThis article is a technical description of the sound system of the Vietnamese language, including phonetics and phonology.-Consonants:Two main varieties of Vietnamese, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, are described below.-Hanoi:...
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West FrisianWest Frisian is a language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. West Frisian is the name by which this language is usually known outside the Netherlands, to distinguish it from the closely related Frisian languages of Saterland Frisian and North Frisian,...
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[nɛkə] |
'neck' |
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YiNuosu , also known as Northern Yi, Liangshan Yi, and Sichuan Yi, is the prestige language of the Yi people; it has been chosen by the Chinese government as the standard Yi language and, as such, is the only one taught in school, both in its oral and written form...
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[na˧ ] |
'hurt' |
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ZapotecThe Zapotec language are a group of closely related indigenous Mesoamerican languages spoken by the Zapotec people from the southwestern-central highlands of Mexico. Present-day native speakers are estimated to number over half a million, with the majority inhabiting the state of Oaxaca....
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Tilquiapan Tilquiapan Zapotec is an Oto-Manguean language of the Zapotecan branch, spoken in southern Oaxaca, Mexico.Santa Inés Yatzechi Zapotec is close enough to be considered a dialect, and Ocotlán Zapotec is also close....
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[nanɨˀɨ] |
'lady' |
contrasts with a fortis alveolar nasal that is not represented in the orthography. |