312 



BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL 



TABLE VIII 



Relative Occurrence of Speech Sounds in Telephone Conversation 



All Words {Except Articles) 



Vowels 



pin . . 

 pine . . 

 pan. . 

 pen. . 

 peel . . 

 pool. . 

 pot. . 

 pane, 

 pole. . 

 pawn . 

 pun. . 

 pull., 

 pout . 

 par. . 

 pair . . 

 purr, 

 pew. . 

 poise . 



75.36 



Unaccented Vowels 

 possible 5.5^ 



about, 

 differ. . . 

 receive . 

 notion . 

 wanted . 

 peop/e . . 



5.33 

 4.56 

 3.78 

 2.65 

 1.83 

 .97 



24.64 



100.00 

 Total Number of 



Sounds 92,522 



Initial Consofiants 



J 



CH 

 Z 



ZH 

 NG 



9. 

 7. 

 6. 

 6. 

 6. 

 5. 

 5. 

 5. 



PR 

 HW 

 ST 

 TR 

 FR 

 PL 

 KW 

 BL 

 SP 

 KL 

 Others 



.38 



.86 



.72 



.48 



.21 



.89 



.75 



.55 



5.46 



4.99 



4.64 



4.33 



4.31 



3.96 



2.78 



2.54 



2.02 



1.74 



1.25 



.83 



.55 



.34 



.02 



93.60 



Compounds 



1.06 

 .91 



.87 

 .69 

 .62 

 .36 

 .28 

 .23 

 .19 

 .18 



Final Consonants 



Compounds 



nt 

 nd 



St 



ts 



nk 



Id 



rz 



ks 



kt 



rd 



1.01 Others 



6.40 



83.68 



4.40 



2.56 



1.18 



1.11 



.76 



.75 



.57 



.47 



.42 



.37 



3.73 



16.32 



100.00 

 64,043 



100.00 

 65,544 



"pan," such being the more common American pronunciation. 

 Actually the occurrence of words in the class of "path" is not high; if 

 they had been given a special class in Table VIII their relative occur- 

 rence figure would have been 0.78, reducing the figure for "pan" to 

 6.11. Special categories are given to the vowel sounds in the classes 

 denoted by "pair" and "purr" since there is often disagreement con- 



