Sound frequency
Under According Frequency refers to the frequency with which the sounds of a language appear in texts of this language or in their dictionaries.
Sounds - Phonemes - Letters
A relatively large number of studies have been carried out on letter frequency in many languages . But if you yourself - for example, from aspects of speech and language therapy research - will deal with the articulation problems, it is necessary that instead sound frequencies or possibly also the Phonemhäufigkeiten capture. A survey on the sound frequencies emphasizes the sound system as a whole, while a survey on the phoneme frequency emphasizes more the sound properties that are important for differentiating between words.
The relationship between sounds and letters
The relationship between sounds and letters is very different in the languages of the world. For example, Finnish is considered a language in which letters and sounds are in a very close relationship, while in English there are clear discrepancies. As far as this relationship is concerned, German stands somewhere between these languages mentioned. The greater the discrepancy between the letter and the phonetic form of words in a language, the more important it is to know not only the letters but also the frequency of the sounds.
Sound frequency in the German language
The following statistics are based on a selection of prose by various authors, which includes 48222 sounds.
| According to | example | frequency |
|---|---|---|
| [ aː ] | k a m | 1,800% |
| [ a ] | K a mm | 2.997% |
| [ ɑ ] 1 | A mood | 0.064% |
| [ eː ] | st eh len | 1.178% |
| [ ɛ ] | St e lle | 2.708% |
| [ e ] | G e nom | 0.112% |
| [ é ] / [ e ] 2 | d e r | 1.298% |
| [ ɛː ] | K ä se | 0.278% |
| [ ə ] | please e | 9.991% |
| [ iː ] | M ie te | 2.453% |
| [ ɪ ] | M i tte | 3.820% |
| [ i ] | v i tal | 0.402% |
| [ oː ] | O fen | 0.937% |
| [ ɔ ] | o ffen | 1.234% |
| [ o ] | R o man | 0.112% |
| [ øː ] | H ö hle | 0.245% |
| [ œ ] | H ö lle | 0.120% |
| [ ø ] | Ö dem | - |
| [ uː ] | M u t | 0.983% |
| [ ʊ ] | M u tter | 2.065% |
| [ u ] | R u am | 0.100% |
| [ yː ] | m above sea SSIG | 0.400% |
| [ ʏ ] | m above sea KISSING | 0.317% |
| [ y ] | Ph y sic | 0.010% |
| [ aɪ ] 3 | H ei m | 2.559% |
| [ aʊ̯ ] 3 | H au s | 0.796% |
| [ ɔʏ̯ ] 3 | Eu le | 0.332% |
| [ r ] | r ot | 7.777% |
| [ l ] | L amm | 3.623% |
| [ m ] | M off | 2,669% |
| [ n ] | N ord | 10.559% |
| [ ŋ ] | La ng | 0.720% |
| [ h ] | H off | 1.120% |
| [ f ] | V OGEL | 2,451% |
| [ v ] | W inter | 2.009% |
| [ s ] | Stra ß e | 4,799% |
| [ z ] | s ECHS | 2,350% |
| [ ʃ ] | Sch ule | 1.412% |
| [ ç ] | I ch | 2,310% |
| [ x ] | La ch s | 0.689% |
| [ j ] | j ung | 0.218% |
| [ b ] | B iene | 1.910% |
| [ b ] / [ p ] 4 | sel b st, let b | 0.241% |
| [ p ] | P ate | 0.545% |
| [ d ] | d ann | 4.884% |
| [ d ] / [ t ] 5 | un d , lei d | 1,360% |
| [ t ] | T ag | 7.111% |
| [ ɡ ] | G ang | 2.281% |
| [ ɡ ] / [ k ] 6 | sa g te | 0.272% |
| [ k ] | K atze | 1,379% |
| [ ʒ ] | G enie | - |
Individual evidence
- ^ Helmut Meier : German language statistics . Second enlarged and improved edition. Olms, Hildesheim 1967, page 253.
literature
- Karl-Heinz Best : Sound and Phoneme Frequencies in German . In: Göttinger Contributions to Linguistics 10/11, 2005, 21–32.
- Karl-Heinz Best : Phone and letter counting in the early 19th century. In: Glottometrics 20, 2010, pp. 110–114 (PDF full text ).
- Günther Thomé, Dorothea Thomé: German words structured according to phonetic and written units. Oldenburg, 2016, ISBN 978-3-942122-21-4 .