There are 40 phonemes in the English language?

there-[Der] not [Ter].

Quote-''where, there, care, fair, heir'' all have the [e] sound in ''set''. [wer], [Ter], [ker], [fer], [er].''

Cable, It all depends on your accent.

North American - ''there'' = /Der/
RP - ''there'' = /De../
Rhotic England = /De..r/
Scotland = /Deir/.

I count 61 phonemes. How does that compare to Cable's count of 40 (is that 42)? I speak unaccented British English.

1.[b]-big
2.[C]-chip
3.[d]-door
4.[D]-then
5.[f]-fish
6.[g]-goat
7.[h]-house
8.[j]-jack
9.[k]-cat, kit
10.[l]-lamp
11.[m]-map
12.[n]-near
13.[N]-sing
14.[p]-pear
15.[r]-road
16.[s]-state
17.[S]-sheep
18.[t]-truck
19.[T]-think, thought, bath, path
20.[v]-vent
21.[w]-wet
22.[y]-yet
23.[z]-zoo
24.[Z]-genre, vision, measure
25.[a]-cat
26.[e]-set
27.[i]-sit
28.[o]-corn, fork, for, horse, short, sort
29.[u]-cut, stuck, struck, front
30.[A]-plate
31.[E]-meet
32.[I]-fight
33.[O]-boat
34.[yU]-mute
35.[oo]-wood
36.[U]-food
37.[ou]-loud
38.[oi]-void
39.[A:]-shot, caught, father, balm, talk, tall, law, slaw, follow, dollar, car, hard, part, sharp
40.[3r']-bird, word, burn, fern
41.[..]-arrest, again, away, afire
42.[..r']-better, weather, heater, winter, realtor, inventor
43.[I@]-idea, beer, tear, fear, steer, clear, tear, pier
44.[e@]-yeah, dare, stare, fare, air, stairs, pair
45.[U@]-cure, pure, tour, moor, skua
46.[O@]-core, four, board, pore, shore, court, hoarse, door, floor
47.[au]-caught, fought, law, saw, paw, straw, claw, call, tall, talk, walk
48.[o*]-cot, cotton, bother, dollar, collar, sorry, lobster
49.[.l]-table, cable, people, steeple, doodle, noodle, waffle, shuffle
50.[.n]-bitten
51.[.m]-rhythm, prism, vandalism, chasm
52.[.r]-centre, metre, acre, theatre
53.[x]-loch, technology, orchid
54.[a:]-bad, sad, glad, mad, can (noun)
55.[3]-colonel
56.[i(:)]-happy, ugly, body, cookie
57.[yu(:)]-regular, February, evacuate, calculator, occupy, ambulance
58.[W]-where, when, why, what, wheel, white, while, whirl

Triphthongs,

59.[ai..']-fire, tire, wire, sire, hire
60.[oi..']-coir
61.[au..']-flour, hour, sour

''Sure it is, in rhotic accents. It doesn't exist for me. Either way, you've listed 41 "phonemes" which is quite funny.''

Jim, Why the inverted commas around ''phonemes''?

''Don't most people say the t in time different than the t in heart (say it outloud)? Plus, your [I] (at least for me) is just [ui], a dipthong. So it is not a phone. You are therefore wrong about your 40 number.''

American Nic, I was listing phonemes not phones. [I] is not a single phone, but it is a phoneme.

Cable,

I'm not convinced that number 32, [jU]-mute, is a phoneme. Also there were holes in your list. Hence I began to doubt that it was a serious phoneme list at all. Hence the inverted commas.

Nic,

Cable's right about the /t/s in "heart" and "time". They may be pronounced differently but they're allophones of the same phoneme.

Nic,

Also diphthongs can be phonemes too. There are five in my accent:

bay
buy
boy
bow
bow

plus two which sometimes come out as a long vowel

beer
bear

they're all phonemes though they glide from one position to another.

''Also diphthongs can be phonemes too. There are five in my accent:''

What about triphthongs? Can they be phonemes too? If so, they're are 3 in my accent.

59.[ai..']-fire, tire, wire, sire, hire
60.[oi..']-coir
61.[au..']-flour, hour, sour

flour-[flau..'r]
flower-[flau-..r']

''I'm not convinced that number 32, [jU]-mute, is a phoneme. Also there were holes in your list. Hence I began to doubt that it was a serious phoneme list at all. Hence the inverted commas.''

Jim, [yU] is a diphthong. If you're going to say that [yU] is not a phoneme, then you might as well extend your argument to all the diphthongs. [yU] is no different from the [ei] or [@i] in ''cake''. Is the [A] sound in ''cake'' just [e+i] or [@+i] and not a seperate phoneme?

Jim, have a look at these words ''mate'', ''mete'', ''mite'', and ''Mote''. Is ''mute'' really any different? Do the first four words have three phonemes but the last one has four? I don't think so.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong

Quote-''Falling diphthongs are stressed on the first element; raising diphthongs on the second. In Closing diphthongs, the second element is closer than the first; in opening diphthongs, more opened. Some languages contrast short and long diphthongs.''

''The unstressed elements of the diphthongs may be transcribed as semivowels. However, when the whole diphthong is analysed as being one single phoneme, both elements are often transcribed as vowels.''

''Diphthongs in English:

''[aU] as in house
[aI] as in kite
[eI] as in same
[ju:] as in few
[oU] as in hope
[oI] as in join
(see SAMPA chart for English for more)''

Diphthongs in British English (RP):

''[@U] as in hope
[I@] as in fear
[E@] as in hair
[U@] as in poor
[O@] as in more
The latter four diphthongs can also occur in Boston English.''

[ju:] is [yU]. [yU] is a phoneme.

Cable, It's multiversal known that [ju:] is a phoneme. Jim is just plain wrong.