äänteistoon

Äänteistoon, often translated as "phonetic inventory" or "sound system," refers to the set of distinct sounds that are used in a particular language. This inventory includes all the individual vowels and consonants that native speakers can produce and distinguish. It's not simply a list of all possible human speech sounds, but rather the specific subset that carries meaning in a given language.

The phonetic inventory of a language is crucial for communication. Speakers of a language use these sounds to form words, and listeners differentiate between these sounds to understand those words. For example, the difference between the English words "pat" and "bat" lies in the initial consonant sounds /p/ and /b/, which are part of the English phonetic inventory.

Linguists study phonetic inventories to understand the structure and patterns of languages. They often use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent these sounds precisely, as it provides a unique symbol for each distinct sound. Different languages have vastly different phonetic inventories. Some languages may have many more vowel sounds than English, while others might include consonants that are not found in English, such as clicks or ejectives. The concept of the phonetic inventory is fundamental to phonetics and phonology.