Consonant Inventories

Sounds · one world map for each value

WALS codes 563 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “Average”, covers 201 of them (36%); the least frequent, “Large”, covers 57.

That value is most frequent in Eurasia (46% of the 146 languages coded there) and least frequent in Papunesia (17% of 93).

All 8 Nakh-Daghestanian languages coded have “Large”.

Austronesian is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 14 of 45.

One map per value; each dot is a language WALS codes with that value.

By macro-area

Value	Africa	Eurasia	Papunesia	Australia	North America	South America
Small	5	3	43	7	8	23
Moderately small	18	19	29	11	21	24
Average	59	67	16	11	27	21
Moderately large	33	32	3	1	19	6
Large	14	25	2	1	13	2
All values	129	146	93	31	88	76

Family	Coded	Most frequent value	Share
Niger-Congo	56	Average	52%
Austronesian	45	Moderately small	31%
Indo-European	31	Average	52%
Afro-Asiatic	28	Moderately large	46%
Sino-Tibetan	26	Average	46%
Trans-New Guinea	23	Small	61%
Austro-Asiatic	17	Average	41%
Altaic	16	Average	69%
Eastern Sudanic	16	Average	44%
Pama-Nyungan	15	Small	33%
Oto-Manguean	10	Average	50%
Tai-Kadai	9	Average	67%
Uralic	9	Moderately small	33%
Uto-Aztecan	9	Average	56%

The most fully coded languages with each value.