• Dessalines@lemmy.mlOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 years ago

      I thought this one had a bit too many consonants, but I spose it makes sense, since all of them are common in the most popular world languages.

    • elii
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s really common cross-linguistically, especially in widely spoken languages, so it’s useful for preserving sounds. /w/ is phonemic in English, Mandarin, Spanish, French, Arabic and Portuguese, and it appears but is not phonemic in Spanish and Bengali. Also, out of the /vβʋw/ group, it’s the best to include because it’s the easiest to learn for people who don’t know it. It’s literally just a shorter /u/; one of the most common vowels cosslinguistically.