28phoneme

28phoneme is a shorthand used in linguistics and language technology to refer to a phonemic inventory that comprises 28 distinct phonemes. It is not a formally defined class of languages, but a descriptive label sometimes used in field notes, textbooks, and computational datasets to indicate the size of a language's phoneme inventory.

Because phoneme inventories vary by language, the actual set of 28 phonemes can differ widely. A typical 28-phoneme system may include five vowel phonemes and 23 consonant phonemes, but many distributions are possible, with vowels ranging from five to six and consonants filling the remainder. The term emphasizes size rather than a fixed typological blueprint.

In practice, researchers may encounter 28phoneme in corpus annotation, phonological analysis, or language-learning software, where the inventory is encoded for tasks such as recognition, synthesis, or pronunciation training. The label helps compare inventories across languages, though it should not be assumed that all 28 phonemes share the same features in every language.

Usage notes: Some authors hyphenate as 28-phoneme or write as 28phoneme; the preferred form varies by source. The concept remains a descriptive tool rather than a universal category, and it is often replaced by explicit inventories when precision is required.

See also: Phoneme, Phonology, Sound inventory, Language documentation.