When we look at the sounds of the world’s languages, there are some sounds that appear more often than others. The stop consonants /k/, /t/, /p/ (and their voiced counterparts) are among the most common sounds we hear, but some languages lack at least one of these consonants. One notable example is the lack of the /p/ sound in Arabic, one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world. So today, I want to look at the languages that lack certain common classes of consonants. These classes we will be looking at are the bilabial consonants like /m/, /p/ and /b/, fricative consonants like /f/, /v/, /s/, and /z/, and nasal consonants like /n/ and /m/. Some languages may lack more than one of these classes, although these form a tiny minority of the world’s languages.

To grasp an idea of how common these classes of consonants are, the World Atlas of Language Structures Online has done a sample of 567 languages, and found that 503 of them has at least one representative for each of these consonant classes, with 64 of them lacking at least one class. While there were no languages that lack all three consonant classes, there were two of them that had no consonants from two of these common consonant classes.

Looking at the geographical distribution, they noted a pattern where no language in Eurasia lacked any of these consonant classes we are looking at, and most of these absences are found primarily in Australia, the Americas, Melanesia, and the Pacific Islands. As we have discussed in the Languages of Australia series, Australia is known to lack fricative sounds like /s/ and /z/. Some studies have attributed this to the restricted hearing range in most Aboriginal Australians, where people with otitis media have hearing loss in certain frequencies. These frequencies correspond to the fricative sounds, and so, it was proposed that most indigenous languages of Australia simply just lacked these sounds to adapt to the effects of otitis media.

No bilabial consonants

This consonant class is defined as a sound made by bringing the two lips together, like in the sounds /p/ and /b/. There are bilabial fricative and bilabial nasal consonants like /m/ as well. The World Atlas did not consider the sound /w/ to be a bilabial, as they justified the movement of the lips to be forward like a rounded vowel, compared to the definition of the consonant class aforementioned. Particular languages of note in this category are the Oneida, Eyak, Tlingit, and the now-extinct Wichita languages, all spoken in North America in Canada and the United States.

Oneida is one particularly interesting language here. While the rest of these languages here are Na-Dene languages, Oneida is an Iroquoian language. But even among members of its language family, Oneida stands out for lacking bilabial consonants. It was noted by one linguist as having all of its consonants sounding “similar to English” with few exceptions. Some linguists think that Oneida lacks nasal consonants as well, but that depends on how the /n/ sound is interpreted in this language.

Tlingit and Eyak are traditionally documented to have no bilabial consonants, although some dialects might have the /m/ sound which is classified as allomorphic, or another representation of a certain sound. Otherwise, sounds like /m/ and /p/ can occur in these languages as part of English loanwords. In Eyak, the nasal consonant /n/ also occurs in loanwords, and so it could technically be said that Eyak lacks both bilabial and nasal consonants. Eyak forms one of the only languages to lack both bilabial and nasal consonants.

Wichita also has some debate over some of its consonants. Labial consonants in Wichita are generally absent, but some exceptions do exist, like in the words “to grind corn” kammac, and “to hoe or cultivate” camma:ci. Apart from these words, nasal consonants are argued to be absent from the language as well. Nasal consonants in Wichita are thought to be allophonic with the alveolar sonorant /ɾ/. One allophone may occur before certain sounds, and the other before other sounds, and thus consonant charts for Wichita do not typically show the nasal consonant. However, one publication by Rood in 2008 suggested the phonemic /n/ consonant, supporting the appearance of a nasal consonant in Wichita.

No fricative consonants

Fricative consonants are defined as the sounds produced when air from the lungs are passed through a narrow constriction on its way out of the mouth, resulting in a noisy turbulent flow pattern. This includes sounds like /s/, /z/, /f/, and /v/. Curiously, the World Atlas did not consider the /h/ to be a fricative consonant in their analysis, but the examples listed here do not contain the /h/ sound anyway. Absence of these consonants, as remarked by the World Atlas, is more prevalent than the absence of bilabial consonants. Besides Australia, most of these languages lacking fricative consonants can be found in New Guinea and South America, with other languages like Kiribati of the Austronesian language family, and Dinka and Lango of the Nilo-Saharan language family also lacking these sounds.

The Nilo-Saharan languages Dinka and Lango belong to the same Western Nilotic branch of languages, with Dinka being spoken in South Sudan, and Lango in Uganda. Dinka is closely related to Nuer, also spoken in South Sudan, and both of these languages share similar sounds including the lack of fricative consonants. Both also have a rich vowel system, with each vowel having a breathy counterpart. Dinka also has three phonemically contrastive vowel lengths, with some inflections of verbs lengthening the vowel. This way, vowel length is classified as short, long, and overlong in Dinka. Lango has a weird classification status. Some say that it is a dialect of the Ateker languages, some sources classify it as its own language, while some have mistakenly classified it as a Luo language. Lango is remarked to be a mix of the Ateker languages and broken Luo dialects, making it related to Luo, but not exclusively a Luo language.

Outside Africa, Polynesia, and Australia, many Papuan languages are known to lack fricative consonants. Examples of these include Lower Sepik language called Yimas, Kainantu language called Gadsup, and the Wahgi language. There is great variation in the number of native speakers of these languages, with some having as few as several dozen speakers, while other can have dozens of thousands. Languages like Yimas are at danger of being replaced by lingua franca such as Tok Pisin, and to a lesser extent, English.

Among these examples, Wahgi stands out as the Middle Wahgi variant has been assessed to have 14 colour terms, with this assessment conducted by linguist Evelyn Ramsey in the 1970s. Here, the colour terms are:

• white – off-white
• black
• [to be] bluish black
• nearly black (referring to a plant used to dye string dark grey)
• true blue
• blue-green
• green (also raw, alive, new)
• light brown
• brown, red, orange, pink
• brown
• yellowish brown
• yellow

Middle Wahgi also has a dozen distinct words for days before and after. This extends way beyond the yesterday, today, tomorrow, and the archaic overmorrow we have in English. In addition to these words, and “day before yesterday”, Wahgi has words up to “10th day from today”, translated as kialwaɫ.

No nasal consonants

A nasal consonant is defined as a closure of the oral cavity where the air flow is directed through the nose instead. This produces sounds like /m/ and /n/. Defining this category is difficult, as some languages make up for their lack of nasal consonants by incorporating a nasal vowel system, or having a system of prenasalised consonants. For example, the Eyak language lacks nasal consonants except in loanwords, but has a system of nasal vowels. To have a language that completely lacks a system of nasality is extremely rare, but nonetheless, these would be the languages I would be interested in focusing on. Overall, it is remarked that the ability to direct air flow through the nasal cavity to produce nasal sounds used in one way or another is present in virtually all human languages.

Examples of these languages with no true nasal system are found in the Americas and New Guinea, and some with among the smallest phonological inventories in any known human language. These languages include Rotokas and Pirahã, but even in these languages, there are allophones or variants that do have nasal consonants involved. For instance, while Central Rotokas lacks nasality at all, Aita Rotokas has the consonants /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/. This did not stop Rotokas from having arguably the shortest alphabet, consisting of just 12 Latin letters with no diacritics nor ligatures. Here, the letters T and S represent the phoneme /t/. In Pirahã, nasal allophones exist, with /b ~ m/ and /g ~ n/. However, Everett does not consider these nasal sounds as normal speech sounds, as it is typically present in special types of speech.

For a language with absolutely no nasal systems, we have to look at Quileute. An extinct Chimakuan language spoken in Washington, United States, Quileute is a polysynthetic language famous for its lack of nasal consonants and nasal vowels. Interestingly, this absence is shared between unrelated languages in its geographical vicinity, particularly, Makah, Nitinaht, and Lushootseed. While Lushootseed is a Salishan language, Makah and Nitinaht are Wakashan languages. With no nasal consonants and no nasal vowels today, this group of languages do indeed stand out as unique. However, Lushootseed, in certain speech styles, could have nasal consonants like /m/ and /n/, putting it in a similar category as Pirahã here.

A particularly interesting characteristic can be found in the Nitinaht language. Prior to European contact, the Nitinaht language had the nasal consonants /n/ and /m/. In fact, it is this /n/ sound which was first recorded as the people’s demonym and language. But soon after, these consonants underwent a shift as part an areal trend, with /m/ shifting to /b/, and /n/ shifting to /d/. So today, the Nitinaht language might be pronounced like Ditidaht today, or more precisely, diitiidʔaaʔtx̣.

As an interesting side note, the Vanimo language, a Skou language spoken by the Dumo people of Papua New Guinea, lacks another common consonant class called the velar consonants. This includes sounds like /k/ and /g/. However, the nasal velar consonant /ŋ/ may still occur, although as part of their vowel system. Their vowels are all nasalised, either as a nasal vowel, or a vowel followed by /ŋ/.

This has been a fun dive covering and briefly introducing some of the languages without certain common consonant sounds, and I hope you have enjoyed learning a thing or two about them.