Consonant-Vowel Ratio

Sounds · one world map for each value

WALS codes 564 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “Average”, covers 234 of them (41%); the least frequent, “Low”, covers 58.

That value is most frequent in Africa (46% of the 128 languages coded there) and least frequent in South America (35% of 77).

Among families with at least eight coded languages, Oto-Manguean is the most uniform: 8 of 9 have “Average”.

Pama-Nyungan is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 6 of 16.

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
Low	10	9	22	0	4	13
Moderately low	25	25	27	2	5	17
Average	59	65	37	12	34	27
Moderately high	17	31	7	12	23	12
High	17	16	0	6	22	8
All values	128	146	93	32	88	77

Family	Coded	Most frequent value	Share
Niger-Congo	54	Average	54%
Austronesian	45	Average	49%
Indo-European	31	Average	45%
Afro-Asiatic	29	Moderately high	38%
Sino-Tibetan	26	Average	58%
Trans-New Guinea	23	Moderately low	52%
Austro-Asiatic	17	Average	47%
Altaic	16	Average	56%
Eastern Sudanic	16	Average	44%
Pama-Nyungan	16	High	38%
Oto-Manguean	9	Average	89%
Tai-Kadai	9	Average	56%
Uralic	9	Average	44%
Uto-Aztecan	9	Average	78%

The most fully coded languages with each value.

Low: English, French, German, Maori, Vietnamese, Lango
Moderately low: Finnish, Korean, Kannada, Khalkha, Chukchi, Maybrat
Average: Spanish, Turkish, Indonesian, Mandarin, Hungarian, Japanese
Moderately high: Georgian, Basque, Hausa, Hindi, Arabic (Egyptian), Greenlandic (West)
High: Russian, Lezgian, Abkhaz, Malagasy, Burushaski, Zulu