Äänteistöä

äänteistö is a linguistic term referring to the phoneme inventory of a language—the set of distinct phonemes that can differentiate meaning in that language. A phoneme is an abstract sound that can distinguish words, while more concrete realizations of the same phoneme are its allophones, which appear in different phonological environments but do not create new contrasts on their own. Therefore, the äänteistö focuses on contrastive sounds rather than every concrete pronunciation.

To determine an äänteistö, linguists analyze speech data for minimal pairs and contrastive distributions, distinguishing sounds that can change meaning (for example, between words like “bat” and “pat” in a given language). The inventory typically includes segmental sounds such as consonants and vowels, but may also account for features like tone or length if they are phonemic in the language. Phonotactic rules, which govern permissible sound combinations, influence how phonemes are realized in actual speech.

Inventories vary substantially across languages. Some have compact phoneme sets; others have rich systems with many consonants, vowels, or both. Loanwords, language contact, and historical sound changes can alter an äänteistö over time. The concept is fundamental in fields such as lexicography, phonology, and speech technology, where accurate phoneme inventories support tasks from dictionary creation to speech synthesis and automatic speech recognition. Researchers often use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to describe a language’s äänteistö in a precise, cross-language-compatible form.