Sounds not phonemic in English

Some speech sounds that are phonemic in other languages either aren't used in English or appear only as allophones of some other phoneme in some specific sandhi context.


 * Bilabial trill [ʙ]
 * In English, any trill sounds like an R, and this rare phone sounds like /br/ as in "bring".


 * Voiceless palatal fricative [c]
 * In German, it's the allophone of /x/ after a front vowel: ch in ich. In English it represents /hj/ as in "huge".


 * Front rounded vowels [ø] and [ʏ]
 * In German these are ö (oe) and ü (ue); in Dutch and French, these are eu and u. They sound sort of like how a nonrhotic speaker of a rhotic dialect would pronounce the R-colored vowel /ɝ/ as in "turkey". In fact, English-language print ads by Hoechst (now part of Sanofi) recommended pronouncing the company's name like "Herkst". Combined with the absence of final [c] in English, this makes bück dich sound like "birthday".


 * Voiceless bilabial fricative [ɸ]
 * Japanese F, as an allophone of /h/ before /u/


 * Voiced labiodental nasal [ɱ]
 * "m" followed by /f/ or /v/, as in "emphasis"


 * Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ]
 * In Welsh, it's the voiceless grade of [l]. In English, it shows up as an allophone of /θl/ in "athlete".


 * Palatal lateral approximant [ʎ]
 * This is a common allophone of /l/ in palatal environments. In some languages, such as iljena, it comes from a fusion of original /lj/.


 * Pharyngeal or epiglottal approximant [ʕ]
 * The "ayin" of ancient Hebrew and modern Arabic, which to English speakers may sound like a dark L. Some dialects pharyngealize prepausal /l/, and it tends to diphthongize or merge with the previous vowel. For example, English "call" may sound like [kʰʌˤ:].


 * Voiced uvular approximant, fricative, or trill [ʁ ~ ʀ]
 * Sounds like a guttural R due to influence from Parisian French and Parisian-influenced standard German. In Eskimo languages, it is written "r" but otherwise has no relationship to any rhotic consonant, instead being part of the /q/-series.